A new book released by
Oxford University Press - Breaking Rules: The Social and Situational Dynamics
of Young People's Urban Crime , by Per-Olof H. Wikström, Dietrich
Oberwittler, Kyle Treiber, and Beth Hardie - reports on the findings of a study
that followed the lives of 700 English teenagers for five years.
The
study, which is hailed as providing findings that will be of major importance
for crime reduction policy and policing, reveals that a mere 4 percent of
teenagers were responsible for half of all youth crime in the cohort group
studied.
Head
of the study, Cambridge Professor Per-Olof Wikstrom, is quoted in today’s Independent on Sunday newspaper (p.6):
“The
idea that opportunity makes the thief – that young people will inevitably
commit crime in certain environments runs counter to our findings.”
Here,
then, is important and solid empirical evidence that supports the theoretical
arguments - published as a peer-to-peer article on the excellent Best Thinking
website in “Opportunity Does Not Make the Thief”.
In that article I present a logical case for why Crime Opportunity
Theory is irrational and so cannot be a cause of crime. Moreover, I produced an
earlier and identical argument, to that made by the authors of the Cambridge
700 Study, that
current USA and UK
While
Crime Opportunity Theorists are notorious for paying scant regard to
dis-confirming evidence, hopefully, police and policy makers will now begin
take notice.
