We peered further into the “black box” of street crime by introducing an indicator of “criminal opportunities” in the previous chapter. As anticipated, this variable had sizable direct effects on all types of criminal activity, as well as intervening between our foreground measure of situational adversity (i.e., nights on the street) and crime. Now we explore how criminal opportunities facilitate the embeddedness of street youth in associations that lead to the acquisition of “criminal capital.”

Broadly conceived, criminal opportunities are the situational characteristics necessary for a crime to occur. There are several recent conceptualizations of criminal opportunities, including Hindelang et al.'s (1978) lifestyle opportunity theory, Cohen and Felson's (1979) routine activities approach, and the opportunity perspective of Cornish and Clarke (1986). In general, these approaches define criminal opportunities as meetings of motivated offenders and potential victims in settings unsupervised by agents of social control.

We see a further neglected dimension to criminal opportunities. Aside from the presence of potential victims and the absence of social control agents, an important determinant of a criminal opportunity is the potential offender's definition of a situation as one suited for offending. Not all people define an unlocked vehicle, a lone pedestrian on a dimly lit street, a poorly guarded business, or an empty house as possible sites for offending. These settings only become opportunities when a person's understanding of the social world translates them into potential sites of criminality. We suggested in Chapter Four that adverse circumstances encouraged youth to interpret situations as criminal opportunities; however, other factors also stimulate this process.