Risk Factor Approach To Crime

The risk-factor approach has the ability to gather important information about whether certain influences in a person’s life could be related to crime or in other words find the correlates to crime (Beaver, K.M., 2017). The approach also has the ability to help prevent crime by determining protective factors (Farrington, D. P., 2000). In turn, both risk and protective factors could become the cornerstones to the development of intervention/prevention programs. However, the risk-factor approach has the potential to help and hinder criminology theorist and criminal justice agencies that utilize this method to prevent crime in adolescents and adults (Beaver, K.M., 2017).

“A risk factor is a particular factor that, when present, increases the

(2017). Criminogenic risk factors, one of the parts to this approach, are factors we associate with criminal participation. If we know the factors that help shape a criminal we can execute interventions designed to eliminate these factors from people’s lives (Beaver, K.M., 2017). There are five areas of life that risk factors can be derived from: the individual, family, schools, peer groups, and the community. Some examples within those five categories are aggression, divorced parents, low school grades, weak social interactions, and neighborhood crime (Shader, M., 2003). In turn, protective factors react in opposition to risk factors. Protective factors are characteristics that are present in the life of an individual which greatly hinders the outcome of criminogenic risk factors (Kazdin, A. E. (1997). In other words, they can potentially offset, shield, or decrease the effects of

One very important benefit is that the approach had a mutually beneficial and communal effect on scholars, policy makers, and practitioner. Prior to the 1990’s we saw a distinct rift between these three types of people. One side was concerned with explanations and the other was concerned with creating programs to help prevent crime but they were not working together. The risk-actor approach bridged the gap between them. When longitudinal surveys were employed to broaden the knowledge of risk factors and experiments were conducted to assess the impact of intervention/prevention programs a connection was formed. By the 1980’s it was found that there were links between applied research, explanations and prevention methods. (Farrington, D. P., 2000). We had scholars conducting ground breaking empirical research and policy makers and practitioners were using the research data received to create programs that would benefit the public and lower or prevent crime. However, as much as the risk-factor approach assists in the implementation of intervention/prevention programs, there is a point of debate with this