Crime and Everyday Life

Crime and Everyday Life, Fourth Edition, provides an illuminating glimpse into roots of criminal behavior, explaining how crime can touch us all in both small and large ways. This innovative text shows how opportunity is a necessary condition for crime to occur, while exploring realistic ways to reduce or eliminate crime and criminal behavior by removing the opportunity to complete the act. Encouraging students to take a closer look at the true nature of crime and its effects on their lives, author Marcus Felson and new co-author Rachel L. Boba (an expert on crime prevention, crime analysis and mapping, and school safety) maintain the book’s engaging, readable, and informative style, while incorporating the most current research on criminal behavior and routine activity theory. The authors emphasize that routine daily activities set the stage for illegal acts, thus challenging conventional wisdom and offering students a fresh perspective, novel solutions for reducing crime . . . and renewed hope.

New and Proven Features

• Includes new coverage of gangs, bar problems, and barhopping; new discussion of the dynamic crime triangle; and expanded coverage of technology, Internet fraud, identity theft, and other Internet pitfalls
• The now-famous “fallacies about crime” are reduced to nine and are organized and explained even more clearly than in past editions
• Offers updated research on crime as well as new examples of practical application of theory, with the most current crime and victimization statistics throughout
• Features POP (Problem-Oriented Policing) Center guidelines and citations, including Closing Streets and Alleys to Reduce Crime, Speeding in Residential Areas, Robbery of Convenience Stores, and use of the Situational Crime Prevention Evaluation Database
• Updated “Projects and Challenges” at the end of each chapter

Crime and Everyday Life, Fourth Edition, provides an illuminating glimpse into the roots of criminal behavior, explaining how crime can touch us all in both small and large ways. This innovative text shows how opportunity is a necessary condition for crime to occur, while exploring realistic ways to reduce or eliminate crime and criminal behavior by removing the opportunity to complete the act. Encouraging students to take a closer look at the true nature of crime and its effects on their lives, author Marcus Felson and new coauthor Rachel L. Boba (an expert on crime prevention, crime analysis and mapping, and school safety) maintain the book's engaging, readable, and informative style, while incorporating the most current research on criminal behavior and routine activity theory. The authors emphasize that routine daily activities set the stage for illegal acts, thus challenging conventional wisdom and offering students a fresh perspective, novel solutions for reducing crime...and renewed hope.

New and Proven Features

The book includes new coverage of gangs, bar problems, and barhopping; new discussion of the dynamic crime triangle; and expanded coverage of technology, Internet fraud, identity theft, and other Internet pitfalls

The now-famous "fallacies about crime" are reduced to nine and are organized and explained even more clearly than in past editions

The authors offer updated research on crime as well as new examples of practical application of theory, with the most current crime and victimization statistics throughout

The text features POP (Problem-Oriented Policing) Center guidelines and citations, including Closing Streets and Alleys to Reduce Crime, Speedingin Residential Areas, Robbery of Convenience Stores, and use of the Situational Crime Prevention Evaluation Database

Updated "Projects and Challenges" appear at the end of each chapter

Intended Audience

This supplemental text adds a colorful perspective and enriches classroom discussion for courses in Criminological Theory, Introduction to Criminal Justice, and Introductory Criminology.

Rachel Boba (PhD and MA in sociology from Arizona State University and a BA in English and sociology from California Lutheran University) is an assistant professor at Florida Atlantic University in the Criminology and Criminal Justice program. At FAU, she teaches methods of research, criminal justice systems, crime prevention, problem solving, and analysis in policing as well as conducts research in the areas of problem solving, problem analysis, crime analysis, regional data sharing, and technology in policing. From 2000 to 2003, Dr. Boba was Director of the Police Foundation's Crime Mapping Laboratory where she directed federally funded grants in the areas of crime analysis and crime mapping, problem analysis, and school safety. Prior to her position at the Police Foundation, she worked as a crime analyst at the Tempe, Arizona, Police Department for five years where she conducted a wide variety of crime analysis and crime mapping work as well as applied research and evaluation.

Marcus Felson, Ph.D., University of Michigan, is Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University. He is co-editor with Ronald V. Clarke of Business and Crime Prevention (Criminal Justice Press 1996) and Routine Activity and Rational Choice (1993).