Step 9: Know that opportunity makes the thief
For environmental criminologists, "opportunity makes the thief" is more than just a popular saying; it is the cornerstone of their approach. They believe that if opportunity increases so will crime. To see if you agree, consider the scenario suggested by Gloria Laycock and Nick Tilley of the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science:
Step 7: Be guided by SARA - but not led astray!
Within problem-oriented policing, the police are required to: (1) carefully define specific problems (see Step 14 for the definition of "problem"); (2) conduct in-depth analyses to understand their causes; (3) undertake broad searches for solutions to remove these causes and bring about lasting reductions in problems; and (4) evaluate how successful these activities have been.
Step 8: Use the problem analysis triangle
Most criminological theories focus on what makes people "criminal". They find causes in distant factors, such as child-rearing practices, genetic makeup, and psychological or social processes. These theories are very difficult to test; are of varying and unknown scientific validity; and yield ambiguous policy implications that are mostly beyond the reach of police practice.
Step 15: Know what kind of problem you have
Because local police have to deal with a wide range of problems that meet the CHEERS definition (Step 14) we have developed a classification for these problems. This classification scheme can help you precisely define the problem. It helps separate superficially similar problems that are really distinct. It also allows you to compare your problem to similar problems that have already been addressed, and it helps identify important features for examination.
Step 11: Expect offenders to react
Offenders make choices based on their perceptions of opportunities. Understanding how offenders see things is important to preventing crime because almost all crime prevention involves changing offenders' perceptions of crime opportunities. Some prevention programs work directly on offenders' perceptions, as when police inform offenders that they are being closely watched.
Step 10: Put yourself in the offender's shoes
Whenever you analyze a crime problem or think about solutions, try to see the crime from the offender's perspective. Try to understand why they commit the crime - not the distant social or psychological causes, but the benefits they are seeking. A radical critique of criminology pointed out 30 years ago that is not their genes that propel bank robbers through the doors of the bank: they rob banks because they want to get rich.
Step 14: Use the CHEERS test when defining problems
A problem is a recurring set of related harmful events in a community that members of the public expect the police to address. This definition draws attention to the six required elements of a problem: Community; Harm; Expectation; Events; Recurring; and Similarity. These elements are captured by the acronym CHEERS:
Step 12: Don't be discouraged by the displacement doomsters
Problem-oriented policing often tries to reduce opportunities for crime. For example, window locks may be fitted to prevent burglary in an apartment complex, or closed circuit television cameras installed to prevent thefts in parking lots. These ways of reducing opportunities for crime often meet the same objection: all they do is move crime around, not prevent it. This theory of displacement sees crime as being shifted around in five main ways:
Step 13: Expect diffusion of benefits
Researchers looking for displacement have sometimes found precisely its reverse. Rather than finding that crime has been pushed to some other place or time, they have found that crime has been reduced more widely than expected, beyond the intended focus of the measures. This is a relatively recent discovery, but already many examples exist:
Step 16: Study the journey to crime
While the problem analysis triangle (Step 8) identifies the three essential elements of crime, it does not explain how offenders find suitable targets. According to Marcus Felson, they do this in three main ways: