ABSTRACT
Environmental criminology is an umbrella term that is used to encompass a variety of theoretical approaches, all focusing on the fourth dimension: routine activity theory, the geometric theory of crime, rational choice theory, and pattern theory-pattern theory is itself a meta-theory of the other three theoretical approaches.* On the last page of his seminal book, Crime Prevention through Environmental Design, C. Ray Jeffery (1971: 279) coined the term “environmental criminology” in a call for the establishment of a new school of thought in the field of criminology. This new school of thought was to retain the principles of the classical school of criminology (the deterrence of crime before it occurs), but the focus of this new school of thought was to be the environment within which crime occurs, not the individual offender.
