Motivated offenders and criminal opportunities as determinants of violent and property crime rates in the United States, 1980-1990

Routine activity theory has proven to be one of the most empirically useful theories of the past two decades in predicting crime rates (Cohen and Felson 1979). Despite the attention paid to routine activity theory and the generally favorable results, our ability to predict crime rates is still not very good. One reason for this may be that the theory as originally formulated by Cohen and Felson and as later applied by many researchers has virtually ignored the motivated offender construct, a central feature of the routine activity model. Conversely, a great deal of effort has been devoted to the conceptualization and measurement of criminal opportunity and guardianship. In previous testing of the routine activity approach, the motivated offender pool concept has been operationalized in an unsophisticated manner, using unidimensional variables such as the unemployment rate or the percentage of males in prime offending ages. While these previous operationalizations of the motivated offender pool have produced interesting and important results, none are entirely satisfactory. Because the motivated offender pool concept has not been fully explored by routine activity researchers, its capacity to explain variation in crime rates remains unknown. The present study extends previous research testing the routine activity approach by more accurately modeling the effects of structural sources of offender motivation on variation in crime rates. A widely recognized source of offender motivation are deleterious economic conditions as characterized by high levels of unemployment. Building on previous investigations of the effects of labor market stratification on crime (e.g., Crutchfield 1989) and theoretical attention to the issue of underemployment and crime (Currie 1985), the present study proposes a revised routine activity approach which, in addition to including conventional indicators of the motivated offender pool, accounts for the effects of anomic labor market conditions on variation in crime rates. Overall, the models tested here fit the data well - all six regression equations predict a statistically significant amount of variation in the dependent variable. Substantively, the results indicate support for the revised routine activity model presented in the current study. The findings for the location quotient, in particular, suggest that as secondary labor markets grow in cities, urban crime can be expected to rise, which is consistent with previous research (Crutchfield 1989). In addition, the results for police per capita and the index of dissimilarity deserve elaboration. First, the effects of formal control in cities (Sampson 1986c) on crime rates should be included in any analyses of official offending. As governmental apparatus for social control increase in strength, one might observe higher arrest rates for minorities and other residents of underclass areas because of the prevailing, and flawed, wisdom that blacks and the poor are responsible for "the crime problem." The findings for the index of dissimilarity, which was statistically significant in both cross-sectional models, suggests that racial segregation is an important factor in determining the effects of this structural characteristic of cities on fluctuating crime rates, especially when testing variants of routine activity theory.