Crime and Nature

Marcus Felson

Mar 2006 · SAGE

About this ebook

Crime and Nature, written by the always innovative and original Marcus Felson, is the first text to provide students with a unique, new perspective for thinking about crime and how modern society can reduce crime′s ecosystem and limit its diversity.

Key Features

• Connects crime to its larger world: This innovative book shows how crime draws from the larger ecosystem, that is, how offenders hunt for targets and how they depend on one another. Extending crime ecology well beyond other works, this book shows how to help shut off crime opportunities and reduce crime in local areas. An examination of how people defend against crime is also provided.
• Stimulates critical thinking about crime: Crime feeds off of legal activities, both shady and legitimate. Through a wealth of examples, ranging from racketeering to juvenile street gangs, this book shows criminology students what to look for and how to sort it out. The author uses recent empirical studies to validate the principles presented and draws from a wealth of experience in other fields, always keeping an eye on what every criminologist needs to know.
• Presents intriguing, useful information in an engaging and unique style: Writing in a warm and personal voice, the author uses an engaging, student-friendly style to build a sophisticated view of crime in small, sure steps. Down-to-earth ideas and examples are presented through concise exhibits.

Intended Audience

This is an excellent supplementary text for a variety of undergraduate courses in criminology and criminal justice, including Criminological Theory, Crime Control and Prevention, Introduction to Criminology, Law and Society, and Social Problems. It will have a lasting impact on present and future criminologists.

Ratings and reviews

awesome1. Felson Chapter 1: How/why did the 1960s provide a “sudden burst” of crime? In the 1960’s the spread of shopping centers provided more opportunity for store, employee, and auto theft. The 1960’s also saw the emergence of females in the workforce, which left homes unattended during the day and allowed more home burglaries. With both men and women working, more teenagers were left without proper supervision. Single-adult households were also starting to show up which resulted in more targets. The baby boomers of the war were around teenage years by the 1960’s, placing a large number of offenders in the community while removing the number of guardians. All of these factors, together, contributed to the increase of crime. 2. Felson Chapter 4: Describe what Felson means by the fallacy of misplaced complexity, including a specific example. Felson argues that while many crimes may be seen as complex, they in fact can be broken down into simpler parts. An example would be selling drugs. While there may be an individual who is higher up in the drug ring, he or she is not necessarily playing puppet master. Each individual involved in the distribution and sale of the drug ultimately makes his or her own decisions. Like Felson mentions, there are not daily meetings in some private room where each individual is provided an itinerary for the day. Instead, each member acts separately, which contributes to the overall goal of selling the drug and making profit. 3. Felson Chapter 8: Discuss Felson’s concept of fundamental vs. realized niches. Which type does he argue gets at the root causes of crime, and why? Felson defines the word niche using two definitions. A fundamental niche is some resource that an offender could use. A realized niche is some resource that an offender has actually used. A realized niche is the aspect that gets at the root causes of crime because they possess the negative aspects of the crime that ultimately affect society. Fundamental niche of crime is the opportunity; the realized niche is the motivation behind it. To decrease crime, one would wish to decrease the motivation, not the general idea of the crime itself 4. Felson Chapter 9: When would nearby drug dealers have to compete with one another? When not? Explain Felson describes two types of competition: exploitative and interference. In terms of drug dealing when looking at interference competition, competition may occur if a certain drug has a smaller clientele market. For example, interference competition could potentially occur if two drug dealers were both trying to sell cocaine to the wealthy, business professionals in a small town. Although there may be customers willing to buy cocaine, there is little need for two dealers. This may result in the two dealers going after one another’s clients, or violently interfering. In the drug dealing world, interference would occur more in terms of competition than exploitation. Drug dealers wouldn’t

About the author

Marcus Felson is the originator of the routine activity approach and of Crime and Everyday Life. He has also authored Crime and Nature, and serves as professor at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. He has a B.A. from University of Chicago, an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, and has received the 2014 Honoris Causa from the Universidad Miguel Hernandez in Spain. Professor Felson has been given the Ronald Clarke Award by the Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis group, and the Paul Tappan Award of the Western Society of Criminology. He has been a guest lecturer in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Ecuador, El Salvador, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Scotland, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, and Switzerland. He has applied routine activity thinking to many topics, including theft, violence, child molestation, white-collar crime, and corruption.