Books by Marcus Felson

Two new criminological approaches are defined and applied to categories of crime. Routine activity analyzes the criminal event, and avoids motivations and psychology as topics for discussion, whereas rational choice approaches crime as purposive behavior designed to meet the offender's commonplace needs, such as money, status, sex, and excitement.

Providing students with a system for thinking about crime, this book shows how crime draws from the larger ecosystem, how offenders forage for targets and how they depend on one another. It considers how crime feeds off legal activities and shows how crime ecology can help shut off crime opportunities and reduce crime in local areas.