Osgood, D. Wayne, Janet K. Wilson, Jerald G. Bachman, Patrick M. O'Malley, and Lloyd D. Johnston: Routine Activities and Individual Deviant Behavior

D. Wayne Osgood

In their 1996 article, “Routine Activities and Individual Deviant Behavior,” D. Wayne Osgood, Janet K. Wilson, Jerald G. Bachman, Patrick M. O'Malley, and Lloyd D. Johnston extended the routine activity explanation of crime, first developed by Lawrence Cohen and Marcus Felson and by Michael Hindelang and colleagues, to account for individual-level crime and deviance. They theorized that people will commit more deviant and illegal behaviors if they spend more of their time engaged in unstructured socializing with peers in the absence of authority figures. Following the logic of routine activity theory, such activities present many opportunities for offending because the presence of peers makes deviance easier and more rewarding, the absence of authority figures reduces the chances of getting into trouble, and the lack of structure leaves time available. Osgood and colleagues’ viewpoint was built from insights provided by previous studies of time use and deviance, and their theoretical logic ...

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