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Burglary in a Segregated City: Race of Offenders and Community of Offending

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The Criminal Act

Abstract

Marcus Felson’s intellectual mind is much like a shotgun blast. The pellets are all aimed in a general direction, most of them are on target and a few are dead-on in hitting the bull’s eye. The most important of those that hit their mark are his development of Routine Activities Theory (Cohen&Felson, 1979) and his integration of this theory with that of the reasoning criminal (Clarke&Felson, 1993). Routine Activity Theory postulates that a crime will take place when a motivated offender encounters a suitable target in the absence of a capable guardian (Cohen&Felson, 1979). In this chapter, we focus on the second and third component of this theory, a suitable target and capable guardians. We examine the patterns of crime committed by residential burglars in Philadelphia, who differ by race. We are concerned with whether a suitable target and guardianship are the same or different depending on the race of the offender and the dominate race of the community within which the offence occurs (Reiss, 1981).

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Authors
  1. George Rengert
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  2. Brian Lockwood
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  3. Elizabeth R. Groff
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Simon Fraser University, Canada

    Martin A. Andresen (Associate Professor) (Associate Professor)

  2. Simon Fraser University, Canada

    Graham Farrell (Professor) (Professor)

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© 2015 George Rengert, Brian Lockwood, and Elizabeth R. Groff

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Rengert, G., Lockwood, B., Groff, E.R. (2015). Burglary in a Segregated City: Race of Offenders and Community of Offending. In: Andresen, M.A., Farrell, G. (eds) The Criminal Act. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137391322_15

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