Risky Business
The main idea of Lifestyle Theory is that more risky lifestyles lead to a higher chance of victimization. According to Glenn Walters, the three aspects of it are conditions, choice, and cognition. Firstly, conditions are created the environment people grow up in which they acquire traits such as high or low impulsivity, high or low IQ, and the attachments they form to important people. Secondly, based on these traits and others, individuals make the choice to commit crime based off their biases of conditions. Finally, the cognition aspect is about the thinking errors that arise from their lifestyle and conditions. Once someone is victimized, they are more likely to be victimized again. Lifestyles that contain more risk are ones that involve illegal activities, or involve people who commit criminal acts, or locations that contain higher crime rates. In addition, simpler choices can also increase risk such as walking home in the dark alone, etc. Criminals always lead high risk lifestyles, but not all victims do. Consequently, the choices people make in their everyday lives determines whether or not they have a high risk lifestyle or a low risk one. This paper will evaluate Lifestyle Theory’s creation, how it withstands testing and how it strongly explains why victimization occurs and how to prevent it.
Origins of Lifestyle Theory
Glenn Walters created the Lifestyle Theory in 1990. He made the connection between conditions, choice and cognition and expresses that it stays the same through all of his experience in clinics, but that the rest of his theory is a “working hypothesis” since it is variable and changing, (Walters, 1990). Walters was a criminologist and a psychologist.
Testing Lifestyle theory
The first study evaluating this theory is by Dixie Koo, Dale Chitwood, and Jesus Sanchez (2008), on the victimization and the lifestyle of drug users. The subjects in the study included 900 people from Miami, Florida from 1997 to 2000. The group consisted of African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos and white men and women. The individuals had to fill out a survey about themselves including information about demographics, drug activity, victimization, etc. Then thirty days later, the subjects were interviewed again on their victimization throughout the time period. Some of the results included that 22% of the subjects indicated they’d been victimized in the time of the study and 11% had been robbed (Koo & Chitwood & Sanchez, 2008). This data depicts a high amount of drug users being victimized which is explained by the Lifestyle Theory, considering it focuses on the victims of violent victimization in this case. The use of drugs increases risk for victimization due to the opportunity it leaves for criminals, as well.
The second study was developed by Jillian Turanovic and Travis Pratt in 2012 on repeat victimization, risky lifestyles, and self-control. The subjects were 12-15 years old in schools from cities in AZ, OR, NE, NM and PA. The full sample was made up of 1,370 kids and the victim subsample was made up of 521 of these kids. In this study the time window between interviews was 6 months. The data concluded that out of the full sample 38% of the subjects were victimized somehow and that 23.81% of the victim subsample evaluated themselves as having low self control, (Turanovic & Pratt, 2012). Therefore, the results express that the number of individuals who are repeat victim depends greatly on them changing their risky lifestyles to a lower risk level to prevent further victimization. This conclusion corroborates with how the Lifestyle Theory determines how to prevent victimization and consequently strengthens the theory.
Lifestyle Theory in context
David Collins published an article about a sex trafficking ring that was discovered in Tolland, Connecticut. Samuel Marino was a drug addict who died in a car chase with two police cars in 2009. During a search of possible victims of the ring, the police found a letter from Marino that exposed his victimization from the sex trafficking ring. Police discovered that the ring targeted people who were mentally disabled and ill, along with drug addicts (Collins, 2018).
Lifestyle Theory explains how the victims in this case were chosen due to the fact that they all had high risk lifestyles. The mentally disabled and ill targets lived that life, not by choice, but still left them exposed just because they were easy targets. They wouldn’t have the ability to make good choices, and could possibly have a lower IQ. Furthermore, drug addicts also live a high risk lifestyle due to their dependence on drugs which increases that chance of victimization since that are partaking in illegal activities, they are less likely to go to the police for assistance, (Koo & Chitwood & Sanchez, 2008). Moreover, all three of the targets were likely lacking guardians to look after them and reduce the odds of being victimized. Since the victims lead high risk lives, the sex traffickers had an easy opportunity to take advantage of these boys. Lifestyle Theory does a strong job explaining why the crime occured.
The Theory, similarly, explains how to prevent the crime from happening. Since high risk lifestyles lead to high rates of victimization, then the targets would need to reduce the risk in their lives in order to reduce the victimization. For the mentally ill and disabled it would mean to increase the activity of a trusted person in their life to look after them more on the grounds that they can’t increase their mental ability as much. The drug addicts would need to stop using drugs and participating in crime by going to a rehabilitation center. Therefore, this theory does elaborate on the prevention of the crime as well as the reason why the crime would transpire.
Conclusion
Walters explains through his theory that crime occurs through the conditions people are raised in, makes choices based on these conditions and reach the cognition stage in which thinking errors occur. These thinking errors allow for criminals to continue to lead lives of crime and for victims to live high risk lives which leads to further victimization. The theory was supported by the two studies done on it, thus a strong indication of the theory having credibility. Based on the real life example of sex trafficking, the theory is able to explain why it occurs and prevention that can occur.