The Demand and Supply of Criminal Opportunities

Criminal opportunity theory provides a framework for examining the interaction between potential offenders and potential victims. Criminals' behavior influences the nature and amount of self-protective measures taken by potential victims, and changes in self-protection make criminal opportunities more or less attractive. Criminal opportunity theory has precursors in criminological theory, preeminently in the work of Cloward and Ohlin, but in these theories opportunities are mediated through social learning. Criminal opportunity theory employs the economic theory of markets to describe and predict how criminals and victims interact. Evidence is available that potential victims take more self-protection measures when the perceived risk of victimization is greater and that prospective criminals are likelier to attack relatively more vulnerable targets. Little research is available on whether increases in self-protection reduce the total volume of crime or merely displace crime to more vulnerable targets; the extent of displacement probably differs among offenses. The market perspective has several benefits to the investigation of interaction between potential victims and offenders: it assembles different topics encompassed by criminal opportunity theory into a coherent whole, it is expressed in a form that facilitates borrowing from economic theory, and it generates new and important insights for policy evaluation and criminological theory. One central insight is that law enforcement strategies may alter the quality of opportunities and thereby precipitate additional crime. Effective incapacitation or rehabilitation policies, for example, may reduce the number of offenders in circulation and thereby reduce the perceived risk of victimization. This may cause individuals to reduce their self-protection efforts, making them more attractive targets than before and thereby stimulating increased crime rates on the part of those criminals who remain active.