Eck, John E.: Places and the Crime Triangle

The fact that crime tends to cluster in particular places is widely accepted and supported by a large body of research. French scholars André-Michel Guerry and Adolphe Quetelet were among the first to “map” crime and identify relationships between crime rates and community characteristics. Also, U.S. Chicago School researchers, including Robert Burgess and Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay, examined crime patterns and discovered relationships between ecological characteristics and concentrations of criminal activity. However, these early studies ignored the heterogeneous collection of both high-crime and low-crime places that clustered together to form high-crime neighborhoods. Social scientists in the 1970s began to develop a collection of theories to explain this phenomenon. These theories form the basis of environmental criminology, often referred to as crime science. Crime science is not concerned with explaining an individual's propensity to commit crime. Instead, crime science research identifies environmental factors that create attractive crime opportunities and proposes interventions to reduce or eliminate these opportunities.

John E. Eck has advanced the crime science paradigm and its application through three significant contributions. First, he extended Lawrence Cohen and Marcus Felson's routine activity theory by calling attention to the importance of people who manage places. This extension led to the development of the crime triangle. Second, he has continued to investigate new analytical techniques and methods of problem conceptualization to improve research strategies and evaluations of crime reduction initiatives. For example, he has demonstrated the importance of using theory to guide interpretations of crime maps. More recently, he has explored the merits of crime pattern computer simulations for practice and theory. Third, he has helped reduce specific crime problems by producing manuals for police practitioners, crime analysts, and researchers that summarize the basic tenets of environmental criminology and recent evaluation findings. In addition to producing manuals to reduce harms associated with student party riots, pedestrian-vehicle accidents, and spectator violence in stadiums, he developed a crime analysis manual that has been translated into 16 different languages and is used throughout the world. Eck also developed the SARA (scanning, analysis, response, assessment) model, which helps police engage in problem-solving policing.

The primary focus of this essay is Eck's extension of routine activity theory and contribution to the development of the crime triangle. First, the origins of the place management addition to routine activity theory are briefly explored. Second, the various elements of the crime triangle are presented along with a discussion of how the triangle is used to address crime problems. Finally, a recently proposed definition of place management and the latest applications of this concept are presented.