The nature of crime is a difficult matter to study. Yet Marcus K. Felson, a professor at the School of Criminal Justice in Newark, in his most recent book, Crime and Nature (Sage Publications, 2006), proposes that naturalists and ecologists may be the key to cracking the case.

Rather than explaining crime using standard theories borrowed from psychology, sociology, or economics, Felson looks to the natural sciences to “help tell the story of crime in neighborhood, city, metropolis, and beyond.” He believes that life scientists are particularly equipped to shed light on the nature of crime, given that naturalists are adept at observing, gathering, and synthesizing information, while ecologists are skilled at explaining how diverse forms of life interact with one another and adapt to their environment.

“This book is a chronicle of how such adaptations occur and how it is relevant to crime prevention as well,” states Felson in the preface.

The origins of Felson’s work can be traced to Ernest W. Burgess’s 1916 paper, “Juvenile Delinquency in a Small City.” Drawing liberally from the life sciences, this paper introduced an ecological analysis of social problems and examined area characteristics instead of criminals for explanations of crime. Though some progress was made by subsequent studies during the 1940s, it took nearly 100 years for Burgess’s urban ecology model to take hold.

In Crime and Nature, Felson employs more recent knowledge about ecology to Burgess’s ideas and forges an explicit link between criminals and their environment, suggesting ways through which crime can be reduced by understanding it “as a living activity.” He illustrates this with examples of safecracking and burglary. After bankers discovered combination locks for their safes in the 19th century, criminals created and devised innovative ways to thwart the lock systems, Felson writes. “Safe companies responded with their own innovations of improved locking devices, which led to a decline in safecracking.

In this example, the criminals and victims both adapted to new situations and attempted to resolve obstacles that arose.” As another example of the interrelationship between crime and the technological environment, Felson states that one of the best predictors of burglary is the weight of a household’s television set – the lighter a household’s television set, the greater the chance of burglary.

On the whole, Felson views crime in the context of everyday life. Both the offenders and the victims are alive, going through the motions of daily life – and crime takes advantage of these motions. “It finds people who are alone, and picks them off … it attacks them, or their property,” Felson said. “Crime is a living activity that feeds off other living activities.”

Before coming to Rutgers, Felson taught at the University of Southern California and the University of Illinois, and was a visiting scholar at the University of Stockholm, at Simon Fraser University (Canada), and the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science at University College London. He has been a guest lecturer in more than 20 countries and has authored nearly 100 professional papers.