The Capable Guardian

Cohen and Felson’s Routine Activity Theory (RAT) posits that for a crime – including an act of violence – to take place there must be a motivated offender, a suitable victim/target, and the absence of a capable guardian. In the previous two articles I have described what constitutes a motivated offender and a suitable victim/target (click on the underlined links to read these). Both of these ideas are fairly obvious and straightforward e.g., in an act of spontaneous aggression where someone has had a drink spilt over them, it is easy to understand their motivation e.g., they feel an injustice has been committed against them and they are probably feeling somewhat embarrassed and the social pressure to regain some self-respect etc. If the person who spilt the drink is a member of a notoriously violent biker gang, whose members are also present, then they’re probably not going to be seen by the “motivated offender” as a “suitable target” for violence, compared to someone who appears nervous, unconfident, and anxious etc. However, the idea of what constitutes a “capable guardian” is somewhat more ambiguous e.g., does the presence of CCTV cameras represent a capable guardian, or does it have to be a person such as a member of a security team, and/or a law-enforcement officer etc. In this article I want to look at this third component of the theory and examine what defines something or someone as a capable guardian.

As I’ve stated before it’s important that the three components of RAT are examined in an interrelated manner i.e., they should not be seen as isolated variables. The opportunity that the presence of a “suitable” victim creates may be what motivates the offender e.g., an offender with a history of committing street robberies might not be planning to do so, but when they cross paths with someone who fits their profile – appears to have a lot of cash, and is likely to comply – they may in that moment be motivated to commit an offense etc., especially if they believe that they will be able to get away with their offense without being identified and/or stopped by a third party (the capable guardian). What constitutes the person/technology fulfilling that role is subjective to the offender. For some, the mere presence of another person in the vicinity who could possibly identify them will act as a capable guardian and deter them from committing their offense, for others this individual may be irrelevant e.g., they know that they are unlikely to actively intervene and/or give a significant description of what they look like that could be used by security or law-enforcement to identify them in the future, etc. Anyone who has worked in bar/club/pub security for a decent period of time, acting as a supposed “capable guardian”, whose role it is to deter physical confrontations etc., has probably had a fight break out in front of them at some point in time; where both participants were motivated to use violence against the other, and saw each other as “suitable” victims. In that moment, fueled by alcohol and emotion, the presence of someone fulfilling the role of a “capable guardian”, wasn’t significant to them, even if they’d registered that someone was there who could break up the fight (which might have factored into their decision-making i.e., they knew a capable guardian would probably break things up before the fight became too serious). This doesn’t mean that RAT is flawed per se, but rather that certain types of crime may not be adequately explained by the “absence” of a capable guardian. However, the role of the capable guardian is still an important factor in explaining offending.

It is important to understand what RAT was trying to explain; which was why crime as a whole went up in the post-war period despite standards of living rising at the same time. The theory was intended to be a general one that explained increases in robberies, thefts, and assaults etc; crimes that tended to be committed in public and semi-public places. It wasn’t designed so much to explain offenses such as intimate partner violence, or child abuse, where the person who should have been acting as a capable guardian was in fact the motivated offender etc., so there will always be some offenses and incidents which don’t fit neatly into the model. Because RAT has an emphasis on time and place, the location where the offense is committed is often more important than the relationship between the motivated offender and the suitable victim e.g., when both parties know each other such as in incidents of intimate partner violence etc., and so Routine Activities Theory may be less useful as a starting point in explaining the nature of such crimes.

An important development of Routine Activity Theory by Clarke and Eck was the role of “Place Managers” as capable guardians. This built on an idea first put forward by Jane Jacobs in her landmark 1960’s work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), where she argued against many of the urban planning principles of 1930’s – 1950’s America. Jacobs is famous within Criminology for her term of “eyes on the street”, as a means of preventing crime, however in many ways what she meant by this has been misunderstood or misinterpreted. It is widely accepted in crime prevention that natural surveillance is one of the best deterrents to crime, however not all natural surveillance is equal e.g., a shopper on a street witnessing a crime is less invested in intervening in some way (such as calling the police), than a shop owner. The shop owner is invested in the success of their store and if the street it is on becomes known as a high-crime area, their business is likely to suffer. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, when Jacobs talked about “eyes on the street”, she was talking not about other pedestrians’ eyes, but about those of shop owners, and street vendors who had a vested interest in keeping the areas surrounding their enterprises safe. These individuals were described by Clarke and Eck as “Place Managers” and were a specific and important type of capable guardians. Place managers can also be other individuals e.g., there have been studies that showed that groups who engaged in public drinking in certain open spaces have acted as place managers intervening in burglaries and break-ins as they didn’t want the police to start patrolling the area etc. Such individuals may not have had an “economic” interest in preventing other crimes being committed but they had a “leisure” investment in the space they occupied. 

Whilst RAT may not adequately describe every single offense, especially those where there is an existing and/or complex relationship between the offender and those they victimize, it offers a great starting point and framework for understanding how many crimes and acts of violence happen. It demonstrates the importance of time and space in offenses, and how this is affected by lifestyles both those of the offender(s) and their target(s).