Compare methods

	Routine Activity Theory	Criminal Career Paradigm
Field	Criminology	Criminology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1979	1986
Originator	Lawrence E. Cohen & Marcus Felson	Alfred Blumstein, Jacqueline Cohen, Jeffrey Roth & Christy Visher
Type	Theoretical framework for explaining the occurrence of predatory crime	Conceptual framework for decomposing offending over the life course
Seminal source	Cohen, L. E., & Felson, M. (1979). Social change and crime rate trends: A routine activity approach. American Sociological Review, 44(4), 588–608.	Blumstein, A., Cohen, J., Roth, J. A., & Visher, C. A. (Eds.). (1986). Criminal Careers and 'Career Criminals' (Vols. 1–2). National Academy Press. ISBN: 9780309036887
Aliases	RAT, Routine Activities Approach, Crime Triangle Framework, Cohen-Felson Theory	Criminal Careers Framework, Career Criminal Paradigm, Offending Career Approach, Blumstein Criminal Career Model
Related	4	4
Summary	Routine activity theory explains predatory crime not by the supply of motivated offenders but by the everyday structure of legal activities that brings offenders, targets, and the absence of guardians together in space and time. Proposed by Lawrence Cohen and Marcus Felson in 1979, it argues that crime rates can rise even when offender motivation is constant, because changes in how people work, shop, and spend leisure time alter the opportunities for crime.	The criminal career paradigm is a framework for studying offending as a longitudinal sequence in an individual's life rather than as undifferentiated aggregate crime. Codified by Blumstein, Cohen, Roth, and Visher in the 1986 National Academy of Sciences report, it decomposes crime into distinct dimensions — whether someone offends (participation), how often active offenders offend (frequency, λ), and the onset, seriousness, and duration of the career — each potentially with different causes.