ABSTRACT
This chapter has three modest aims. The first is to outline and consider critically some superficially powerful objections to rational choice theory in criminology and crime prevention. The second is to re-present analyses of crime patterns and of situational crime prevention within a coherent frame work drawn from scientific realism. The third is to elucidate the logic of research methodology and practice within situational crime prevention. In all this there is little that is substantially new. It is basically a stock-taking and tidying-up exercise. The most it can hope to do is to help us work in a less cluttered and more orderly way.
