Lifestyles

The "lifestyle/exposure theory" was developed by Hindelang, Gottfredson, and Garofalo (1978:243; e.g., see Goldstein, 1994; Maxfield, 1987:275; Miethe, Stafford, and Long, 1987:184). This model of criminal events links victimization risks to the daily activities of specific individuals (Goldstein, 1994:54; Kennedy and Forde, 1990:208).Lifestyles are patterned, regular, recurrent, prevalent, or "routine activities" (Robinson, 1997b; also see Cohen and Felson, 1979; Felson, 1994; Hindelang, Gottfredson, and Garofalo, 1978:241; Garofalo, 1987:24, 39). Lifestyles consist of the activities that people engage in on a daily basis, including both obligatory and discretionary activities. LeBeau and Coulson (1996:3; also see LeBeau and Corcoran, 1990) assert that:The former are activities that must be undertaken while the latter because they are pursued by choice are called discretionary. 'An activity is discretionary if there is a greater chance of choice than constraint, and obligatory if there is a greater degree of constraint than choice" (Chapin, 1974:38). Both activities have a duration, position in time, a place in a sequence of events, and a fixed location or path in space (Chapin, 1974:37).Kennedy and Forde (1990:208) summarized the lifestyle/exposure model as "lifestyle, encompassing differences in age, sex, marital status, family income, and race, influences daily routines and vulnerability to criminal victimization, resulting in the fact that "Victimization is not evenly distributed randomly across space and time -- there are high-risk locations and high-risk time periods" (Garofalo, 1987:26). "Lifestyle patterns influence (a) the amount of exposure to places and times with varying risks of victimization, and (b) the prevalence of associations with others who are more or less likely to commit crimes." A similar theoretical model developed by Kennedy and Forde (1990: 209, 211) suggested that background characteristics and daily activities affect time spent in