The situational and environmental perspective in criminology refers to a collection of theories and approaches that focus on the role that immediate circumstances play in producing criminal acts. This contrasts with criminology’s more usual preoccupation with what creates offenders’ criminality: depending on the disciplinary orientation, the disposition to commit crime is accounted for by genetic makeup, developmental experiences, or current social, cultural, and economic conditions. Correspondingly, the usual solution to any crime problem is deemed to require altering these long-term and systemic causes of criminality, for example, by investing in early intervention with at-risk families, increasing educational opportunities, removing social and economic disadvantage, or providing treatments for known offenders.
Situational and environmental perspectives, on the other hand, focus instead on the dynamics surrounding crime events. Attention shifts from distal causes of...
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Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science, University College London, 35 Tavistock Square, London, WC1H 9EZ, UK
Richard Wortley & Nick Tilley
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Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Gerben Bruinsma
VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Gerben Bruinsma
Department of Criminology, Law and Society, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA
David Weisburd
Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel
David Weisburd
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Wortley, R., Tilley, N. (2014). Theories for Situational and Environmental Crime Prevention. In: Bruinsma, G., Weisburd, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Springer, New York, NY. //doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2_548