Lifestyles Theory Essay

The life-style/ depiction theory was developed by Hindelang, Gottfredson, and Garofalo (1978243 e.g., see Goldstein, 1994 Maxfield, 1987275 Miethe, Stafford, and Long, 1987184). This poseur of twist events links victimization risks to the day by day activities of specific individuals (Goldstein, 199454 Kennedy and Forde, 1990208).Lifestyles are patterned, regular, recurrent, prevalent, or routine activities (Robinson, 1997b also see Cohen and Felson, 1979 Felson, 1994 Hindelang, Gottfredson, and Garofalo, 1978241 Garofalo, 198724, 39). Lifestyles consist of the activities that people engage in on a daily basis, including both obligatory and discretionary activities. LeBeau and Coulson (19963 also see LeBeau and Corcoran, 1990) assert thatThe former are activities that must be undertaken tour the latter because they are pursued by choice are called discretionary.An activity is discretionary if there is a greater chance of choice than constraint, and obligatory if there is a gr eater degree of constraint than choice (Chapin, 197438). Both activities have a duration, position in time, a place in a age of events, and a fixed location or path in space (Chapin, 197437).Kennedy and Forde (1990208) summarized the lifestyle/exposure model as lifestyle, encompassing differences in age, sex, marital status, family income, and race, influences daily routines and vulnerability to criminal victimization, resulting in the fact that Victimization is not evenly distributed randomly across space and time there are forged locations and high-risk time periods (Garofalo, 198726). Lifestyle patterns influence (a) the amount of exposure to places and times with varying risks of victimization, and (b) the prevalence of associations with others who are more or less likely to commit crimes.A similar theoretical model developed by Kennedy and Forde (1990 209, 211) suggested that background characteristics and daily activities affect time spent in questioning lifestyles which l ead to dangerous results (i.e., criminal victimization). In their words, demographic and lifestyle variables . . . can be interpreted as contributing to more or less time spent in risky activities and indirectly contributing to dangerous results (Kennedy and Forde, 1990209).Numerous studies have shown relationships between daily activities of individuals and their likelihood of criminal victimization (Riley, 1987340). In other words, what people do and how they behave places them at either more or less risk of criminal victimization (Maxfield, 1987 Miethe, Stafford, and Long, 1987 Sampson and Wooldredge, 1987).According to Sampson and Wooldredge (1987372) An active lifestyle . . . appears to influence victimization risk by increasing exposure of persons and homes to potential offenders while guardianship is low.Yet, an active lifestyle whitethorn not necessarily increase ones risk of criminal victimization. For example, if there is a great deal of activity by residents, neighbors, o r passers by around a residence, then this activity may serve to decrease the likelihood that a property offender will victimize a residence. In fact, many property offenders are non-confrontational and want to overturn being seen by residents, neighbors, or passers by (Cromwell, Olson, and Avary, 1991 Tunnell, 1994 Wright and Decker, 1994). Whether an active lifestyle leads to higher or lower risks for criminal victimization may bet on several factors. It might depend on the temper of ones activities i.e., whether they are patterned and predictable to offenders, or sporadic and less predictable.This issue has not been settled by academic research, although the majority of lifestyle research suggests that active lifestyles increase risks for criminal victimization (Robinson, 1997b). Part of why there is some uncertainty about this issue is because when relationships between lifestyles and crime are studied, dependent variables typically consist of some composite measure of crim e (see Robinson, 1997b Thompson and Fisher, 1996). Whether active lifestyles lead to higher or lower risks for crime might depend on the specific type of crime that is being studied. Since composite measures of crime have been utilized by researchers rather than distinct measures of individual crime types (Bennett, 1991 Maxfield, 1987 Thompson and Fisher, 1996), it is closely impossible to differentiate the effects of peoples lifestyles on different types of criminal victimization.This is problematic, because lifestyle/exposure theory is crime specific (Bennett, 1991158 Thompson and Fisher, 1996). For example, crimes such as burglary and theft may create different opportunities for offenders For a burglary to occur, an offender has to break and enter a home to get the desired goods. An offender who commits a larceny, on the other hand, may ride off with a bicycle left out on the lawn or steal something from the porch of a home.These examples demonstrate that the opportunity structu re for burglary and larceny are different and therefore the two crimes must be examined separately in research (Thompson and Fisher, 199652 also see Gottfredson, 1984 Maxfield, 1987 Sampson and Wooldredge, 1987).Research examining the relationship between lifestyles and crime should avoid pooling or aggregating crime types, because examining the effects of lifestyles on composite measures of crime leads to inconsistent findings (Thompson and Fisher, 199653).