Routine Activity Theory: A Cornerstone of Police Crime Analyst Work

Abstract

This chapter spotlights the contribution of Marcus Felson’s work, specifically Routine Activity Theory and its outgrowths, to the work of the police crime analyst. In the environmental criminology field, the term “crime analysis” is used to denote what researchers, theorists, and practitioners do in a variety of ways to understand and analyse crime (that is, “Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis” or ECCA) (Wortley & Mazerolle, 2008). However, in the context of this chapter, crime analysis is used more deliberately. That is, a police crime analyst is not anyone who analyses crime, but is someone specifically employed by a police department. The crime analyst examines crime and calls for service data, identifies patterns of crime, conducts statistical analysis, and assists with problem solving of long-and short-term problems (Santos, 2012). A police crime analyst’s main responsibilities are to help police deploy their crime reduction efforts, evaluate the agency’s effectiveness in addressing crime and disorder, and to be an overall authority on the analysis of crime within the agency (Santos, 2012). Consequently, this chapter contends that police crime analysis is fundamentally grounded in applying Routine Activity Theory and its concepts through the practical perspective of the theory, the adoption of problem-oriented policing strategies, and the focus of police crime reduction on geography and the clustering of crime by place. I would argue that Routine Activity Theory is one of the cornerstones of police crime analyst work and that Marcus Felson can be touted as one of the architects of modern crime analysis.