Classifying “Micro” Routine Activities of Street-level Drug Transactions

Abstract

Objectives:

Routine activities theory attempts to link the intersection of individuals’ everyday routine activities to crime events at particular places. This study examines crime events not just as the product of intersecting macroroutine activities but also microroutines (similar to crime “scripts”) that occur immediately before, during, and after a crime event occurs.

Method:

Closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage was accessed through Baltimore City Police Department from 2010 to 2011. Ethnographic techniques and systematic social observation of CCTV footage were used to categorize the microroutines of 74 street-level illicit drug transactions.

Results:

The findings illuminate eight microroutines of drug crime events that classify behaviors associated with illicit drug activity.

Conclusions:

This study advances our understanding of the link between routine activities and drug crime by examining how illicit transactions unfold from microroutines using a rarely employed, but fruitful source of data (CCTV footage).

Keywords

routine activity theory criminological theory drug selling/trafficking drugs research method qualitative research crime

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