Routine Activities Perspective Research Articles

Cyberbullying victimization and the COVID-19 pandemic: a routine activity perspective

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic-induced shift to online learning resulted in students spending more time online while quarantining. Using data collected before and during the pandemic from representative samples of eighth graders, we explored differences in cyberbullying victimization, including factors in students’ daily lives that may contribute to cyberbullying, before and during COVID-19 through a routine activity lens. We found that students were more likely to experience cyberbullying during the pandemic than before and that parental guardianship, target visibility, and characteristics of victims help explain this difference. These findings add to our understanding of the unequal impact the pandemic may have on different groups while underlining the importance of parental guardianship and collaborative intervention.

Household occupancy and burglary: A case study using COVID-19 restrictions

IntroductionIn response to COVID-19, governments imposed various restrictions on movement and activities. According to the routine activity perspective, these should alter where crime occurs. For burglary, greater household occupancy should increase guardianship against residential burglaries, particularly during the day considering factors such as working from home. Conversely, there should be less eyes on the street to protect against non-residential burglaries. MethodsIn this paper, we test these expectations using a spatio-temporal model with crime and Google Community Mobility data. ResultsAs expected, burglary declined during the pandemic and restrictions. Different types of burglary were, however, affected differently but largely consistent with theoretical expectation. Residential and attempted residential burglaries both decreased significantly. This was particularly the case during the day for completed residential burglaries. Moreover, while changes were coincident with the timing and relaxation of restrictions, they were better explained by fluctuations in household occupancy. However, while there were significant decreases in non-residential and attempted non-residential burglary, these did not appear to be related to changes to activity patterns, but rather the lockdown phase. ConclusionsFrom a theoretical perspective, the results generally provide further support for routine activity perspective. From a practical perspective, they suggest considerations for anticipating future burglary trends.

Opportunity and the sexual abuse of adolescents

ObjectivesThe risk of sexual abuse victimization was examined from a routine activity perspective. For comparison, predictors of sexual encounters with same-age peers were also examined. MethodsAnalyses were based on a nationally representative sample of 24,823 Finnish youth who responded to questions about their sexual encounters with peers and with someone outside their family who was at least five years older. ResultsAdolescents who had older friends and parents who did not monitor their social relationships were at greater risk of sexual abuse and peer encounters. In addition, delinquent youth had a higher risk of abuse than non-delinquents, controlling for exposure. Delinquent youth were also more likely to have favorable attitudes toward the abuse, to initiate the sexual encounter, and to experience repeat victimizations. Physical attractiveness, but not sexual maturity, was related to abuse. ConclusionsRisk of sexual abuse is positively related to exposure to older people, susceptibility to deviant influence, and the target's value to the offender. A full understanding of risk factors requires a consideration of the victims' characteristics and their compliant behavior.

Crime drop in Ghana? Some insights from crime patterns and trends

This study examines crime rate trends in Ghana in the context of research into the international crime drop. Ghanaian police-recorded crime data are imperfect, but crime rates appear to have increased to the early 2000s then to have declined significantly. However, the national trend for all crime types masks significant variation by crime type and region. The national trends appear, broadly speaking, consistent with long-term crime increases and decreases in high-income countries, but with a lag that may reflect Ghana’s economic development trajectory. This may be consistent with the routine activity perspective if both crime opportunities and economic development increased in parallel, followed by a crime decline that reflected increased security measures or other change. The study raises many questions that require further research, and some suggestions to that end are outlined.

Workplace cyberbullying: A criminological and routine activity perspective

Extant research on the antecedents of workplace cyberbullying pays little attention to the role of perpetrator traits in influencing workplace cyberbullying, as well as the unique occurrence context that distinguishes workplace cyberbullying with juvenile cyberbullying, workplace bullying, and adult cyberbullying in general. To fill these gaps, we consider the antecedents of workplace cyberbullying under the theoretical lens of the general theory of crime and routine activities theory. We build a model incorporating low self-control, a widely discussed perpetrator trait in criminology theories, with three types of routine activities representing the unique occurrence context for workplace cyberbullying—mWork, boundary-spanning in enterprise social media, and proactive email checking. We tested our model with 2025 employees in the United States. Our findings demonstrate that low self-control and the three routine activities are strong motivators for workplace cyberbullying. Our findings further show that the effect of low self-control on workplace cyberbullying is amplified by the three routine activities. The study contributes to our understanding of why workplace cyberbullying occurs and offers potential implications for managers interested in reducing incidences of workplace cyberbullying in their organization.

Does the Association Between Flows of People and Crime Differ Across Crime Types in Sweden?

Places with persistently high levels of crime, hot spots, are an important object of study. To some extent, the high levels of crime at such hot spots are likely to be related to flows of people. City center locations with large flows of people are quite often also hot spots, e.g., hot spots for pick pocketing at a central train station, or hot spots for assault in the nightlife district. This can be related to crime pattern theory, or to the routine activity perspective, which both suggest that flows of people can affect crime. The present study attempts to explore and quantify whether there are differences in the association between flows of people and crime for different crime types. The analysis considers locations with high crime counts for six crime types in the city of Malmö, Sweden. For each crime type, hot spots are identified and mapped, and in order to explore whether, or how, these are related to flows of people, the crime levels are then analyzed in relation to the number of people who boarded a local bus (N = 33,134,198) nearby. The paper shows that all six crime types are associated with flows of people, although less so for arson and vandalism. This is hypothesized to be due to the relatively constant target availability for these crimes as opposed to the other crime types studied.

Automotive cybersecurity: assessing a new platform for cybercrime and malicious hacking

ABSTRACTThe push for technological enhancement and Internet connectivity in all aspects of modern life is radically transforming our use of devices and equipment that was not designed with this functionality. In fact, technological enhancements are transforming the automotive industry by increasing the number of components within the vehicle that are controlled by computers and which provide information to remote systems by various communications methods. These changes create new opportunities for cybercrime, particularly acts of cyber-trespass by computer hackers. This study considers how these technical threats may be limited through the use of criminological theory, specifically a routine activities perspective. The role of various actors in the automotive supply chain, and their potential function to deter and mitigate threats are discussed. The implications of this study for theory and practice are discussed in depth.

Crime in an Affluent City: Spatial Patterns of Property Crime in Coral Gables, Florida

This study investigates the spatial and temporal patterns of property crime at the census block level in the mid-sized, medium- to high-income city of Coral Gables, Florida, USA, between 2004 and 2016. Specifically, we analyzed residential and vehicular burglary. We used Emerging Hot Spot Analysis (EHSA) to locate and identify crime hot and cold spots over time. In order to understand the role that various sociodemographic variables play in predicting crime patterns, geographically weighted regression (GWR) was used to analyze the spatial clustering of crime, and commercial areas, renter percentage, median household income, and multifamily households. Our results revealed consistent hotspots for residential and vehicle burglary within the northeast area of the city, while vehicle burglary had hotspots along U.S. Route 1 (US-1)—a main road in Coral Gables—and around the University of Miami, with emerging hotspots within the northwest part of the city bordering lower-income areas. Hotspots were associated with structural factors within and around the city including more multifamily homes, higher poverty rates, more renters, and greater economic disadvantage in surrounding municipalities. Social disorganization and routine activity perspectives are supported as frameworks to understand crime patterns in this context. The findings suggest that policymakers should target specific locations using geospatial analyses to better address property crime.

What Influences the Victimization of High-Level Offenders? A Dual Trajectory Analysis of the Victim-Offender Overlap From the Perspective of Routine Activities With Peer Groups.

Although the consistent association between offending and victimization is a long-noted phenomenon, current criminological research is still engaged to gather profound knowledge on the etiology of this victim-offender overlap. Beyond that, the examination of its development over the life course requires further attention to create a better understanding of why offending and victimization are strongly connected. Applying a joint trajectory technique, the present study examines the overlap between distinct trajectories of offending and violent victimization throughout the phase of youth and adolescence using seven consecutive waves from the German longitudinal study "Crime in the Modern City." In particular, the victimization of high-level offenders is investigated taking a routine activity perspective with a focus on activities with peers. The results indicate that there is a sizable overlap between trajectories of violent victimization and constant offending with four out of five high-level offenders being repeatedly victimized. Furthermore, the examination shows that meeting more frequently with friends, going out and drinking alcohol, doing forbidden things for fun, and casually hanging out with friends increases the risk of high-level offending significantly. Moreover, the analysis indicates that meeting frequently with friends enhances the risk of violent victimization for offenders, whereas casually hanging out reduces the risk. However, these impacts can only be observed for the present sample and cannot be generalized with sufficient certainty. In addition, the analysis provides evidence that gender differences in the victim-offender overlap are mediated through diverging activities. Implications and limitations are discussed.

Disability Type and Risk of Sexual and Stalking Victimization in a National Sample: A Lifestyle–Routine Activity Approach

Research findings from national samples indicate that people with disabilities have a higher risk of sexual and stalking victimization than their counterparts without disabilities. While this body of research indicates that disability is a risk factor for interpersonal victimization independent of known risk factors derived from the lifestyle–routine activity perspective, it has not yet been established whether the risk factors of victimization vary across disability type. Using survey data from approximately 40,000 college students from across the United States, this study addresses this issue by examining lifestyle–routine activity risk factors for victimization among subsamples of individuals with no disability, physical disabilities, mental disabilities, and learning disabilities. Results from multivariate binary logistic regression analyses indicate that risk factors for victimization vary across groups, with the greatest number of significant risk factors observed for students with no disabilities.

‘It Just Be Like That’: Young Men’s and Women’s Attributions of Negative Sexual Behavior

This paper provides an examination of the role that male peer support plays in negative sexual attitudes and behaviors vis-a-vis women. Drawing on semi-structured interview data collected from at risk high school students in an urban Midwestern town, we are able to qualitatively explore attitudes, behaviors, and experiences within this group of young men and women as they relate to negative sexual behaviors. We integrate routine activities theory with a male peer support theory of violence to to obtain a more holistic view of negative sexual behaviors. Male peer support models provide us with a theoretical explanation of the variation within motivation, thereby filling a serious gap in the routine activities perspective.

Stalking Victimization Among College Students: The Role of Disability Within a Lifestyle-Routine Activity Framework

This study utilized the routine activity perspective and incorporated measures of disability to examine the underexplored relationship between disability status and stalking victimization. Survey data from approximately 43,000 college students from across the United States were examined to explore these relationships. Results indicated that disability was a significant risk factor for victimization. Consistent with theoretical expectations, several measures of lifestyles and routine activities also were found to increase risk of stalking victimization, including volunteering, employment, and risk-taking behaviors such as alcohol and drug use. Collectively, the results suggest that measures of disability should be incorporated into future research testing the routine activities perspective for interpersonal victimization.

HOW AND WHY DOES WORK MATTER? EMPLOYMENT CONDITIONS, ROUTINE ACTIVITIES, AND CRIME AMONG ADULT MALE OFFENDERS*

An inverse relationship between employment and crime is well established, although the mechanisms that account for the correlation remain poorly understood. In the current study, we investigate the role of work quality, measured objectively (hours, income) as well as subjectively (commitment). A routine activities perspective is proposed for the work–crime relationship, and it inspires hypotheses about the way that work reduces crime indirectly, in part, through unstructured leisure and substance‐using behaviors that tend to carry situational inducements to offend. The results derive from within‐person analyses of monthly data provided by adult male offenders recently admitted to state prison in the Second Nebraska Inmate Study (N = 717; NT = 21,965). The findings indicate that employment significantly reduces self‐report crime but only when employed men report strong commitment to their jobs, whereas other work characteristics are unrelated to crime. This indicates that, among serious criminally involved men, the subjective experience of work takes priority over its objective characteristics. The results also indicate that routine activities only partly mediate the relationship among work, job commitment, and crime, whereas the majority of the work–crime relationship remains unmediated.

Sensation Seeking and Adolescent Alcohol Use: Exploring the Mediating Role of Unstructured Socializing With Peers.

Researchers have theorized that adolescents high in sensation seeking are particularly sensitive to positive reinforcement and the rewarding outcomes of alcohol use, and thus that the personality vulnerability is a direct causal risk factor for alcohol use. In contrast, the routine activity perspective theorizes that part of the effect of sensation seeking on alcohol use goes through the propensity that sensation seekers have towards unstructured socializing with peers. The study tests a model with indirect and direct paths from sensation seeking and participation in unstructured peer socialization to adolescent alcohol use. Cross-sectional data were collected from 360 students in a state-secular Jewish high school (10th to 12th grade) in the center region of Israel. The sample was equally divided between boys (51.9%) and girls (48.1%), respondents' age ranged from 15 to 17 years (mean = 16.02 ± 0.85). Structural equation modeling was used to test the direct and indirect paths. While sensation seeking had a significant direct path to adolescent alcohol use, part of the association was mediated by unstructured socializing with peers. The mediated paths were similar for boys and girls alike. Sensation seeking is primarily biologically determined and prevention efforts are unlikely to modify this personality vulnerability. The results of this study suggest that a promising prevention avenue is to modify extracurricular participation patterns of vulnerable adolescents.

Analyzing Predictors of Bullying Victimization With Routine Activity and Social Bond Perspectives.

Bullying victimization in school settings is a serious problem in many countries including the United States. It has been associated with serious incidents of school violence as well as detrimental physical, psychological, emotional, and social consequences for its victims. Given its consequences, it is crucial to understand who is more likely to be targeted for bullying victimization. This study examines whether a number of important factors such as gender, physical and interactionist school security measures, and involvement in extracurricular activities influence an individual's risk of bullying victimization from social bond and routine activity perspectives. The study employs the 2011 School Crime Supplement of the National Crime Victimization Survey to investigate the causes of bullying victimization. The results show that gender, interactionist school security measures, and extracurricular activities affect an individual's likelihood of bullying victimization.

Intoxication and Crime Risk

Despite low overall crime rates, physical and sexual attacks are not uncommon at many American residential universities and colleges based, in part, on a strong association between intoxication and crime risk. Drawing upon concepts from a routine activities perspective and using ordinal logistic regression, this study contextualizes the effects of students’ “party” routines on their risk of recurrent crime victimization while at college. Findings show that, for women, spending time at bars doubles their risks of repeat physical attack and unwanted sexual contact. For men, crime risk is better predicted by types of substances used. Specifically, alcohol and pharmaceutical drugs increase men’s risk of repeat physical attack, whereas marijuana decreases risk. Still, marijuana use is the only routine that increases risk of repeat rape for both women and men. Implications of findings for student safety and strategies for reducing recurrent victimization within a party context are discussed.

Životní styl jako rizikový faktor viktimizace mládeže

The study analyzes the issue of youth victimization and approaches it from a perspective of criminological theories focusing on lifestyle. First, victimological theories labeled lifestyles/ routine activities perspective are introduced and a possibility of their integration with other significant predictors of victimization is discussed. Second, the integrated model is empirically tested making use of data from a Czech youth survey ISRD-3. Two types of victimization are analyzed, namely theft victimization and violent crime victimization. The results of the study are largely in agreement with the proposed model.

On the Relevance of Spatial and Temporal Dimensions in Assessing Computer Susceptibility to System Trespassing Incidents

We employ knowledge regarding the early phases of system trespassing events and develop a context-related, theoretically driven study that explores computer networks’ social vulnerabilities to remote system trespassing events. Drawing on the routine activities perspective, we raise hypotheses regarding the role of victim client computers in determining the geographical origins and temporal trends of (1) successful password cracking attempts and (2) system trespassing incidents. We test our hypotheses by analyzing data collected from large sets of target computers, built for the sole purpose of being attacked, that were deployed in two independent research sites (China and Israel). Our findings have significant implications for cyber-criminological theory and research.

Routine activities and product counterfeiting: a research note

Product counterfeiting has only recently emerged as an area of research interest for criminal justice and criminology scholars. As a consequence, criminological research and application of criminological theory to this phenomenon is limited at this time. This article proposes that routine activities theory provides an excellent framework for understanding the product counterfeiting phenomenon. The article reviews the basic tenets and concept of the theory, provides a brief review of the existing criminological literature that addresses product counterfeiting with special attention on the theoretical perspectives that have been applied until now, maps out a general framework for the application of routine activities theory to product counterfeiting, and identifies key indicators used to study product counterfeiting from a routine activities perspective. It concludes with a discussion on how this framework will enhance the understanding of the crime and identifies new avenues for research.

The Routine of Mass Murder in China

Using data obtained from 165 mass murders in China, this research examines the crime of mass murder through a routine activities perspective as it relates to the location of where they occur (rural areas), while taking into consideration the motivation (revenge and profit), and most common weapon (knife) used. This adds to the literature on mass murders and routine activities theory from an area (China) where little academic research has been published regarding this crime.