Target suitability refers to a person or a property which an offender may approach as suitable target to commit a crime. The idea is that some targets are more suitable than others. Target suitability consists of two main dimensions, namely the accessibility of the potential victim as a crime target and the attractiveness of the person as a target. The relationship between attractiveness and target suitability is further mediated by the target's accessibility. Lifestyle Exposure Theory and Routine Activity Theory also discuss target suitability.
Crime rates increased after World War II because the routine activities of society had begun to shift away from the home, thus increasing the likelihood that motivated offenders would converge in time and space with suitable targets in the absence of effective guardianship. Cohen and Felson (1979).
An offender would view target suitability or in other words a target "suitable" in the following circumstances:
a) A home which is not lit properly.
b) A woman or an elderly person standing alone without anybody in the vicinity.
c) A house with no visitors.
The attractiveness of the target is related to its material or symbolic desirability for the offender. Target attractiveness can change from crime to crime and from offender to offender. This involves the physical visibility and ease of accessibility of the crime target suitability.
Personal crimes require physical contact, or the threat of harm, between the offenders and the victims, thus the offenders must be able to corne into direct or close contact with their potential victims if any criminal interaction is to occur. This factor aIso involves the ability of the target to resist attack which, in the case of sexual assault, could include weight and size of the female victirn (Bennett 1991).
In sexual assault victims, substance use may play a role in target suitability by making women more easity accessible and perhaps more cornpliant. Victim pre-assault alcohol use may also decrease the ability of the victim to offer any forceful resistance to a sexual assault (Ullman, Karabatsos, and Koss 1999).
Proactive Police Intervention and Imminent
Social Change
Intervention strategies that might be used by the police to mitigate
the effects of impending social changes that could impact the crime-related factors of
target suitability, effective guardianship, and offender motivation. Abstract: Target suitability will increase with a continued proliferation of valuable,
portable, compact, and readily saleable goods because of technological advances in
electronics, telecommunications, computerization, and other high technology areas. The
concept of motivated offenders is defined in terms of the probability of committing an
antisocial act under specific circumstances, rather than as a quality applying to an
individual in all circumstances.
DAYLIGHT AND DARKNESS TARGETING STRATEGIES AND THE RISKS OF BEING SEEN AT RESIDENTIAL BURGLARIES. TIMOTHY COUPE, LAURENCE BLAKE.
Burglars minimized the risks of being spotted by selecting "up-market" targets with better front cover and low occupancy that reflected the occupants' higher employment levels. After dark, townhouses with less cover were popular despite victims, fewer of whom were employed, raising more alerts.
Evidence indicates consistency with routine activity theory, and target strategies appear rational, though shaped by differences in risks and offenders. Distinctive daylight and darkness strategies proved attractive to certain types of motivated offenders, so that housing morphology, victims, their lifestyle, risks, rewards and burglar characteristics were distinctively aligned, providing the framework for target suitability and area selection.