Routine activity theory has critically underappreciated the role of social structure in accounts of the incapacitation of capable guardianship. In response, this article emphasises the unanticipated macro conditions that hinder the capacities of experts to control crimes against wildlife. Routine activity theory is framed here not as a heuristic of crime prevention but as a causal mechanism integrated in a generative social context. As a metatheoretical contribution, the article develops a domain-specific ontology of how enforcement deficits can be conceptualised beyond neo-positivist accounts. The wider institutional arrangements of political economy and criminal justice policy conditions are shown to constrain the capable guardianship of wildlife on the rural frontier. The article contributes new knowledge to wildlife insecurity while advancing novel theory on structure and agency in the aetiology of crime control.
Orlando Goodall (2026) studied this question.