Routine Leisure Activities and Rates of Crime: A Macro-Level Analysis

The purpose of this paper is to apply a “routine activities” approach to explain the relations between macro-level indicators of leisure activities and rates of serious crime. We hypothesize that indicators of the volume of leisure activities that typically take place within households will exhibit negative relations with rates of crime, whereas indicators of the volume of leisure activities that are usually conducted away from households will yield positive associations with rates of crime. Regression analyses for a sample of the largest Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas (SMSAs) in the United States provide strong support for these hypotheses. A “household activities” index and a “nonhousehold activities” index exhibit negative and positive associations, respectively, with SMSA crime rates. We suggest that while these results are fully consistent with the routine activities approach, they are not readily interpretable with reference to other general perspectives on the relations between leisure and crime.