Crime Opportunity Myth | dysology.org

Also available from Amazon and all good book shops. .

Towards a science of veracity

Understanding the power of fallacies, myths and lies

Dysology is the study of orthodox bias, academic blind spots, irrationality, pseudo scholarship and fraud influencing bad social science research, bad science, bad policymaking, quackery, counterknowledge, 'voodoo histories', 'voodoo criminology' 'flat earth news' and other ignorance.

Supermyths

When respected skeptics deploy a myth to bust another, or else to support one, they create deeply entrenched fallacies known as supermyths.

The myth that opportunity is a cause of crime

Many criminologists, 'crime scientists', national and local government departments and police forces believe that Marcus Felson's notion of crime opportunity shows that such 'opportunity' is a cause of crime. In fact Felson’s causal notion of crime opportunity is simply a truism masquerading as causality.

The Crime Opporttunity Myth has been bust in the following peer reviewed publication:

Sutton. M. (2014) Fencing/Receiving Stolen Goods. In Bruinsma, G. and Weisburd, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. New York. Springer.

Free peer-to-peer articles on this subject can be accessed here:

Opportunity Does Not Make the Thief: Busting the Myth that Opportunity is a Cause of Crime (Here)
Contingency Makes or Breaks the Thief: Introducing the Perception Contingency Process Hypothesis (Here)
Crime Opportunity and the Art of War and Driving: Thieves and Dealers in Stolen Goods are Like Warmongering Invaders and Motorists at a Juncture of Appropriate Circumstances for Aggressive Action (Here)
Routine Activity Theory’s ‘Mindless’ Chemistry Meme Masquerades as a Theory of Crime Causation (Here)

Buy the bombshell supermythbusting book that the so-called "Darwin Industry" does not want you to read. HERE

Where crime is concerned, a potential offender can have a pre-crime accident, get injured or otherwise thwarted during a criminal attempt. The capabilities of any guardian can never be fixed (known) in advance of a crime happening. Even the Little Piggy in the house made of sticks might have leaped out of his demolished home at the very last minute and poked the Big Bad Wolf in the eye with a broken twig. Check out the hundreds of newspaper stories of have-a-go heroes (archived) if you doubt this. My criticism along these lines is included by my colleague Roger Hopkins Burke 2014 within the pages of his excellent best-selling text book "Explaining Criminological Theory" - pp.69-70). Similarly, Critical Criminologists Jeff Ferrell, Keith Haywood and Jock Young provide criminologists with my no punches pulled criticism of what's wrong with RATortunity (Ferrell, Hayward and Young 2015, pp 69-70) in the second edition of their excellent book Cultural Criminology: An Invitation. Furthermore, as yet another editorially peer-reviewed and in-print source for those looking for scholarly sources to cite these ideas, my original explanation for why the RAT notion of opportunity (Ratortunity) is a mere truism masquerading as causality is published in a peer-reviewed essay in the Springer Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice (here).