The Neglected Situation: A Crossnational Study of the Situational Characteristics of Crime*

Abstract

Although it is generally recognized in the social sciences that the “situation” is indispensable for understanding behavior, thus far criminologists have not devoted systematic attention to situational analysis. This paper contributes to the development of a situational perspective on crime by defining the concept of situation, developing four hypotheses about the situational characteristics of selected personal contact crimes, and then testing those hypotheses using victimization survey data from the United States and Venezuela. The research shows that coercive crimes are less situationally clustered than noncoercive crimes and that instrumental crimes are more situationally clustered than character crimes. Despite tremendous differences in crime rates for the two countries, substantial similarity is found in situational crime patterns. The implications of the research for criminological theory are discussed.

Violence Against College Students and Its Situational Contexts: Prevalence, Patterns, and Policy Implications

“…However, there is also major "situational clustering" (LaFree & Birkbeck, 1991;Miethe & Regoeczi, 2004) in that the vast majority of all incidents of student violence occur in a relatively small number of situations. For example, the 68 most dominant situational contexts account for 86% (1,234 of 1,431) of all violent incidents against college students, and nearly twothirds of all violent incidents (63%) fall within the 25 most prevalent profiles.…”

“…This situational context is defined by the combination of victim, offender, and offense-related Downloaded by [Universidad de Sevilla] attributes that form the basic structure of crime events (LaFree & Birkbeck, 1991;Miethe & Meier, 1990;Miethe & Regoeczi, 2004). Contrary to an analytic approach that relies on main-effects models, analysis of the situational contexts of violence experienced by college students requires the adoption of a methodology that can describe the underlying patterns of these events when multiple combinations of variables are considered simultaneously.…”

An investigation of reporting violence to the police: A focus on Hispanic victims

“…Several argue that the situational context of crime is a neglected area in empirical research (see e.g., Kennedy & Forde, 1999;LaFree & Birkbeck, 1991;Meier, Kennedy, & Sacco, 2001;Miethe & Meier, 1994;Miethe & Regoeczi, 2004). The situational context of reported violence is an entirely neglected area especially as it related to Hispanics and other victim groups.…”

Exploring Bystander Presence and Intervention in Nonfatal Violent Victimization: When Does Helping Really Help?

“…The typical analytical approach used in this research, however, rarely is designed to assess this situational context because the unit of analysis is the individual victim or offense. As an alternative to conventional methods for discrete multivariate analysis, consistent with the research of others (see Miethe & Regoeczi, 2004;LaFree & Birkbeck, 1991), we use a conjunctive analysis of case configurations to identify the most dominant social contexts for violent crimes and bystander intervention within them.…”