CONJUNCTION OF CRIMINAL OPPORTUNITY
Paul Ekblom
Design Against Crime Research Centre
Central Saint Martins
University of the Arts London
Adapted from
Ekblom. P. (2010) ‘The Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity Theory’. Sage
Encyclopedia of Victimology and Crime Prevention. London: Sage.
The Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity (CCO) is a theoretical framework
designed to draw together the major, immediate causes of criminal events, and in
parallel, the major ‘families’ of intervention principles deployable to block, weaken
or divert those causes, thereby preventing crime. It serves both theoretical,
academic purposes, the development and management of practice knowledge,
and practitioner education. This entry first explains the origins of CCO, then
follow a full description, reference to alternatives to CCO, varieties of CCO and
future developments as CCO continues to evolve.
Origins of CCO
In the 1990s an attempt was made to classify several thousand crime
prevention projects implemented through the UK Safer Cities Programme. One
purpose was to put ‘like with like’ when evaluating project impacts. The diversity
of those projects was challenging. They covered a range of institutional settings
and preventive methods, and no single existing framework could handle the
complexity or breadth.
Likewise, even using detailed entries from the
programme’s management information system, determining exactly what the
individual projects were endeavouring to do proved difficult. There was no
universal, rigorous and consistent schema or language by which the preventive
interventions could be described – and no systematic map of preventive
possibilities. Terminology for causation and prevention was confused, unclear
and overlapping, with spurious contrasts such as ‘situational versus social’. This
not only inhibited retrieval and replication of success stories, it also constrained
the realisation and monitoring of each original project as it unfolded.
Exacerbating confusion was the fragmentation of the field of crime
prevention into situational and offender-oriented territories, with their own
languages and theories; and fragmentation, too, into institutional settings such as
‘enforcement and judicial-based’ and ‘civil’ prevention (changes made in
everyday life such as the ethos of schools or the layout of parks). Again this
generated spurious contrasts such as ‘prevention versus deterrence’. Even
within situational prevention, the main theories were (and remain) poorly
integrated, so each novice practitioner must assemble them afresh.
Therefore, it was decided to purpose-design a new framework: one that
was inclusive of types and theories of crime, and types and contexts of
prevention; and based on a suite of clear and consistent definitions. The focus
was to be on the immediate, or ‘proximal’ causes of criminal events, whether
originating in offenders or crime situations. ‘Distal’ or remote causes (such as
children’s early upbringing, aspects of social structure such as inequality, or
market forces such as those which made copper piping expensive therefore
worth stealing), were important. But they were too varied, complex and often too
hard to measure and define, to supply the basis of a theoretical and conceptual
framework.
Contemporaneously, Nick Tilley was introducing a ‘Scientific Realist’
perspective to the crime prevention domain. This emphasised the importance of
understanding, and manipulating, the ‘causal mechanisms’ that underlie
preventive interventions. Here, the key question is not simply ‘what works?’, but
‘in what context, and how – by what causal mechanisms?’ So, CCTV in car parks
might work simply by scaring offenders off, or by facilitating detection and arrest.
Only the second mechanism is potentially durable (the offenders soon ignore the
cameras if nobody catches them), so it is important for practitioners to know
which is operating. They must also tune the intervention to their context, because
mechanisms are quite ‘delicate’: only the right combination of circumstances
triggers them. This means that understanding and reproducing mechanisms is
vital for replication of ‘success story’ projects. In effect, the CCO offers a
universal ‘mechanism map’ of the causal preconditions that must come together
for a crime to occur. The mechanism perspective enabled CCO to centre on
analytic causal and contextual factors rather than simply being a superficial
listing of causes and a ‘natural history’ of preventive methods.
The framework was assembled from familiar theories of crime causation
including Rational Choice Theory, Crime Pattern Theory and Routine Activities
Theory. The last was in effect the starting point, from which questions were
posed such as ‘how is the target suitable?’ and ‘why is the offender likely?’ Since
these ‘situational’ theories intentionally contained only minimalist reference to
offenders, psychological and interpersonal aspects of criminals were taken from
the theoretical writings for example of David Farrington. Seeking an exhaustive
‘map’ of causes led to identification and filling of gaps: for example the concepts
of ‘crime promoters’ and ‘offender resources’.
From these beginnings what became CCO evolved iteratively while it was
applied to classify descriptions of several thousand Safer Cities projects, and
progressively extended or refined as new kinds of cause or intervention were
encountered. Eventually the framework stabilised at 11 generic causes and
equivalent intervention principles as described below.
What began as
classification moreover produced a framework with much wider potential, as
interest was growing in the education and training of a new cadre of crime
prevention and community safety practitioners in the police and beyond; and in
equipping them with tools for a demanding job. To reflect this wider applicability,
the original ‘Proximal Circumstances’ framework was rebranded in 1998 as the
Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity.
Development of CCO within this
practitioner and ‘programme delivery’ context up to 2003 led to an accretion of
‘preventive process’ elements which were eventually ‘hived off’ to a separate
(and equally deliberately-designed) process model, the 5Is framework, equivalent
to SARA of Problem-Oriented Policing but containing more detail.
What is CCO exactly?
CCO, like Routine Activities Theory, is an ecological model of the
immediate causes of criminal events centring on human agents acting out
particular roles in a particular setting.
Agents
The Offender is the one agent without whom a crime by definition cannot
occur. Offenders are covered in more detail below. The other agents about to be
described, and the physical setting, are the situation for the offender. The other
agents play two kinds of role in the causation of crime.
Crime Preventers are people who make criminal events less likely, by their
mere presence or their action such as surveillance of strangers, supervision and
(more distally) socialisation of their children, or using window locks. Preventer
roles can be undertaken in various institutional or non-institutional settings, by
police patrols, vigilant employees, neighbours chastising next-door’s children or
‘good citizens’ reporting hazards. Preventers can act before the criminal event
(securing their car), during it (repelling assailants) or after. Regarding the last, the
prevention will strictly speaking not affect the current crime but may involve
action to fix a vulnerability before the next offence; arrest of the current offender;
and perhaps deterring other offenders. However, offenders’ anticipation of such
responses to their crimes may serve to prevent the current instance too.
Crime Promoters are people who, by contrast, play roles which actively
increase the risk of criminal events, with varying degrees of intentionality and
responsibility. They include someone accidentally provoking the (potential)
offender; a ‘friend’ encouraging the offender to avenge an insult; a fence buying
stolen goods or supplying weapons; or simply someone leaving their laptop
visible when parking their car. The aim of much prevention is to switch the
careless promoter into the role of careful preventer.
Note that victims don’t directly feature here, although unsuccessful
preventers may become victims. Victims are not only active roles in which people
seek to limit, repair and recover from the harms of the criminal event (and
participate in investigatory and Justice processes), but may be the target of
violent crime.
Entities
Entities are the ‘things’ in crime situations. The Target of crime may be a
person or object that is inherently criminogenic: vulnerable, valuable or
provocative. (The person as target is considered in passive terms; active human
provocation is covered under the Promoter role.)
The target may be located in a Target Enclosure such as safes, locked
rooms or gated compounds. Enclosures are characterised by structural features
including periphery, boundary fence, access doors/gates and interior. Each of
these may have criminogenic properties (or criminocclusive ones – reducing the
probability of crime).
Enclosures are situated in turn in a Wider Environment. This could be,
say, a shopping mall, park, transport interchange or housing estate.
Environments (whether ‘wider’ ones, or the interior environment of an enclosure)
can be characterised by two distinct sets of properties. The instrumental
environment relates to the goals of offender and preventer. The extent to which
the physical layout (like sightlines and barriers), lighting etc affect the balance of
tactical advantage between, for example, stealth v surveillance, ambush v
awareness, pursuit v escape, respectively favouring one or other party. The
motivating environment covers, say, how many attractive targets the environment
contains. Using Richard Wortley’s situational ‘precipitators’, the environment may
also supply physical conditions which directly prompt, pressure or provoke
aggressive actions (such as ‘collision points’ at busy commuter stations), or
which routinely contain crime promoters such as a ready audience for youths
racing stolen cars, who may prompt, pressure or permit the action.
The offender
As said, compared with situational approaches CCO adds psychological
depth to the offender concept; but in as generic way as possible rather than by
adhering to specific psychological theories.
The offender side of crime causation starts with Predisposition to offend –
aggressive tendencies, antisocial attitudes etc which comprise a permanent
potential for criminal behaviour that is present, but not necessarily expressed, in
all situations the (potential) offender encounters.
The next element is Resources to avoid offending which include both
inhibitory capacity such as self-control and skills to make an honest living (hence
to make honest choices when confronted with tempting criminal opportunities).
Remaining offender elements move gradually away from omnipresent
potential towards factors activated in particular situations. Readiness to offend
comprises emotional or motivational states induced by current life circumstances
(like unemployment, poor housing or longstanding conflict) or recent experiences
(like a stressful commuter journey or the desperate need for money for a drug fix;
also intoxication).
Resources for offending empower offenders to tackle the risks and exploit
the possibilities for instrumental crime and to realise expressive crimes such as
revenge attacks. They range from facilitators like tools or weapons to skills and
predispositions such as courage and strength, perpetrator techniques,
knowledge of opportunities, and social contacts accessing trusted resources as
offered by fences or co-offenders. The ability to neutralise guilt or psych oneself
up for an attack may also aid offenders. Note that whereas in much of the
situational
prevention
literature,
‘opportunity’
is
considered
a
situational/environmental concept, the notion of resources makes it an ecological
one. For example, an open window 5 metres up is only an opportunity to
someone with strength, agility, courage and maybe a ladder.
Decision to commit offence captures the offender’s immediate perception
and anticipation of, and response to, the ‘Rational Choice’ agenda of risk, effort
and reward; and their reaction to situational prompts and provocations. The
immediate decision (with familiar qualifications on rationality) will be influenced
by both the offender’s predisposition, resources to avoid and commit offences,
and readiness. Habits and more strategic career choices (to be a burglar, to be a
criminal and so forth) may also come into play and be influenced in turn by
outcomes of individual attempts. Perceived risks, effort etc operate parallel
causal mechanisms to their objective counterparts: the robust appearance of a
bus shelter may discourage vandalism, or its robust construction physically resist
attack.
Finally, Presence of offender in situation is of course necessary, although
that presence could be ‘telepresence’ as in obscene phone calls; or ‘sending the
boys round’.
The offender – twin perspectives
The CCO incorporates two perspectives on the offender. On the one
hand, offenders are seen as agents, with goals, decisions, and actions intended
to realise them. On the other they are themselves as much caused as causing:
early experiences, current experiences, and operation of cognitive processes
including perception, motivation and emotion. Recent formulations of CCO
therefore refer to offenders as caused agents; likewise with preventers and
promoters. CCO causes are illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1 Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity: immediate causes of
criminal event
Dynamics
CCO as described is a static, analytic picture of elements with the
immediate potential to cause criminal events. This is useful for many purposes;
but it is also necessary, when focusing on causal mechanisms, to consider the
dynamic, interactive nature of the conjunction. At one level this relates to
offenders perceiving, being provoked perhaps, choosing, reacting and acting,
applying skills and capacities to exploit the opportunity and overcome the risks of
crime; to the preventers and promoters making equivalent contributions; and to
the several players anticipating and adapting to one another’s perceived actions.
At another level, dynamics covers the processes whereby the elements of the
conjunction come together: for example, lifestyle routines of the players, market
processes, people-flows on foot or in public transport (the ‘nodes and paths’ of
pattern theory), all of which may count as crime generators. Of course, some
offenders deliberately seek favourable places (defined as crime attractors); they
may even actively plan to bring the elements of the conjunction together as in a
‘professional’ robbery or fraud.
The preventive side
Crime prevention is about intervening in the causes of criminal events to
reduce their probability of occurrence and any ensuing harm. The map of causes
that is CCO can therefore be overlaid by an equivalent map of intervention
principles aimed at blocking, weakening or diverting those causes. This
relationship is shown in brief in Table 1, and illustrated in Figures 2 and 3.
Table 1 Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity: basic causes and
intervention principles
Immediate causes of criminal event
Possible interventions in cause
Predisposition to offend
Reducing criminality through
developmental/remedial intervention
Lack of resources to avoid crime
Supplying cognitive, social, work skills to avoid
crime
Readiness to offend
Reducing readiness to offend by control of
disinhibitors eg alcohol, or stressors and
provocations; satisfaction of psychological and
social needs legitimately
Resources for committing crime
Restricting resources – tools, weapons,
knowledge
Decision to commit offence
Deterrence (perceived risk) and discouragement
(perceived effort and reward)
Offender presence in situation
Excluding offenders from crime situation
Target property or person
Reducing target vulnerability, attraction,
provocativeness
Target enclosure
Perimeter/ access security
Wider environment
Environmental design and management to
reduce motivating and instrumental properties
Crime preventers
Boosting preventers’ presence, competence,
motivation, responsibility
Crime promoters
Discouraging/deterring promoters, converting
them to preventers
Figure 3 Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity: intervention principles
CCO can thus be used to articulate interventions in some theoretical
depth. A practical intervention method may act via more than one mechanism –
for example, creating an enclosure around an industrial estate may physically
block the offender, deter through perceived risk, and aid preventers, who now
only have to guard the access point, not the entire perimeter. CCO encourages
precision – for example, note that ‘target hardening’ often relates to hardening
the target enclosure, say by making a house resistant to burglary.
Alternatives to CCO
A few alternative integrating theoretical frameworks exist within crime and
crime prevention. The most familiar is probably the minimalist ‘Crime Triangle’,
originating within the Problem-Oriented Policing movement: Victim/Target,
Location, Offender. This has been extended in recent years to allow for ‘crime
preventer’ roles influencing each node: thus targets have guardians, locations
place managers and offenders handlers.
The ‘General Theory of Crime’ of Gottfredson and Hirschi combines
propensity and opportunity in an equally minimalist way. A more complex
newcomer is the ‘Situational Action Theory’ of P-O Wikström. This also focuses
on causal mechanisms, and offenders as agents perceiving and acting in
particular ecological settings, but additionally explains how the environment
influences the development of people’s crime propensities.
Varieties of CCO
CCO has been extended to cover various specific kinds of crime and
criminal context. These include complex organised crime, cybercrime (CCO can
be rewritten in cyberspace terms where the target is information, the enclosure is
a firewalled computer system and so on), drug dealing and terrorism.
Future developments
Current work on CCO centres on developing its dynamic aspect principally
through use of scripts and ‘script clashes’ (surveillance versus stealth, pursuit
versus escape etc), and adapting it for use by designers of products and places.
Exploration of its use as a basis for computerised crime simulation, and crime
impact assessment is also under way.
Conclusion
CCO is undoubtedly more complex than individual equivalents such as the
Crime Triangle, although it offers compensatory simplification because it
integrates all major theories of crime and its prevention in a single 11-factor
framework. The key issues are whether that greater complexity adds greater
value to practice and theory, and whether it is, or can be made, sufficiently userfriendly for practitioners to be prepared to use it.
FURTHER READINGS
Ekblom, P. (2000). The Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity - a tool for clear,
'joined-up' thinking about community safety and crime reduction. In S. Ballintyne,
K. Pease and V. McLaren (Eds.), Secure foundations: Key issues in crime
prevention, crime reduction and community safety. London: Institute for Public
Policy Research.
Ekblom, P. (2002). From the source to the mainstream is uphill: the challenge of
transferring knowledge of crime prevention through replication, innovation and
anticipation. In: N. Tilley (Ed.) Analysis for Crime Prevention, Crime Prevention
Studies 13, pp. 131–203. Monsey, N.Y.: Criminal Justice Press/ Devon, UK:
Willan Publishing.
Ekblom, P. (2003).
Organised crime and the Conjunction of Criminal
Opportunity framework. In A. Edwards and P. Gill (Eds.), Transnational
Organised Crime: Perspectives on global security. London: Routledge, pp. 241–
263.
Ekblom, P. (2005). How to police the future: scanning for scientific and
technological innovations which generate potential threats and opportunities in
crime, policing and crime reduction. In M. Smith and N. Tilley (Eds.), Crime
Science: New Approaches to Preventing and Detecting Crime. Cullompton:
Willan.
Ekblom, P. and Tilley, N. (2000). Going equipped: criminology, situational crime
prevention and the resourceful offender. British Journal of Criminology, 40. 376–
398.
Roach, J., Ekblom, P. and Flynn, R. (2005). The Conjunction of Terrorist
Opportunity: a framework for diagnosing and preventing acts of terrorism.'
Security Journal, 18(3), 7–25.
See also
www.designagainstcrime.com > Methodology and Resources >
Crimeframeworks
http://5Isframework.wordpress.com
Ekblom, P. (2011) Crime Prevention, Security and Community Safety Using the
5Is Framework. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=296569