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8 - Implications of Opportunity Theory for Combating Terrorism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2011

By
James P. Lynch
Edited by
Brian Forst ,
Jack R. Greene  and
James P. Lynch
Brian Forst
Affiliation:
American University, Washington DC
Jack R. Greene
Affiliation:
Northeastern University, Boston
James P. Lynch
Affiliation:
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York
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Summary

INTRODUCTION

Opportunity theory (OT) was an innovative approach to understanding why crime occurs, as well as how crime is distributed across people, places, time, and activities (Hindelang, Gottfredson, and Garafalo, 1978; Cohen, Felson, and Land, 1980). Prior to the appearance of OT, the typical approach to understanding crime was to determine why certain people were motivated to commit crime and others were not. The resulting criminological theories focused on the person, and specifically the criminal, as the unit of analysis, and sociological and psychological processes as the principal explanations for criminal motivation. OT in contrast, emphasized the occurrence of crime rather than criminal motivation as the phenomenon to be explained. The place or the situation is the unit of analysis, and characteristics of those places or situations explain when crime will occur and when it will not (Clarke, 1997).

OT was embraced immediately by applied criminologists and practitioners, because it seemed much simpler and easier to translate into policy than traditional criminological theory (Clarke, 1980; Felson and Clarke, 1998). Under the latter paradigm, crime could be affected only through the psychological and sociological processes that affected motivation. This was a long-term process that was imprecise in its outcome, and largely out of the control of criminal justice agencies that are often held accountable for crime and its distribution. OT gave these groups a way to understand the occurrence of crime that could be immediately translated into action.

Type
Chapter
Information
Criminologists on Terrorism and Homeland Security , pp. 151 - 182
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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