The routine activity theory is a theory that mainly focuses on situations experienced in crime. Marcus Felson and Lawrence E. Cohen first proposed it to explain the change in crime rate between the year 1947 and 1974. It states that for a crime to be committed, three specific criteria must be involved (Corcoran, Zahnow, & Higgs, 2016) . The criteria are that there must be a motivation that leads to the commitment of a crime, a suitable target and the absence of a capable guardian to prevent the crime. Marcus and Lawrence sought to elucidate that even though America was prospering economically compared to the depression before the war, crime rates were still high showing that crimes are not generally increased by economic recessions and high unemployment rates (Felson, 2017) . They argued that the absence of the three elements would be enough to stop or prevent any crime from happening. They drew a conclusion from human ecological theories suggesting that changes in structure in societal routine activity patterns can influence crime rates by affecting the convergence in time and space of the three essential elements. The change in people's routine activities changes the convergence of time, space, and absence of guardians with the motivated offenders. This is to mean that crime opportunities and patterns are a function of routine activity patterns of society (Felson, 2017) .
Criminal Offending
Criminal offending, in theory, suggests that criminal offenders have to be motivated to commit the offense first. The Motivation can be due to drug dependency lack of self-control among others (Miles-Johnson, Mazerolle, Pickering, & Smith, 2018) . The routine activities theory and social disorganization theory have been used together to help understand motivated criminal offenders in various neighborhood crimes. Offenders are mostly racially, ethnically, religious offenders and offenders motivated by sexual orientation (Miles-Johnson, Mazerolle, Pickering, & Smith, 2018) .
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Target Hardening
Making targets to crime more resistant to attack is an essential strategy in reducing burglary. Target hardening involves the measures that make committing crimes harder to do as well as reducing the opportunities for criminals to achieve their goals of burglarizing homes. The realization of target hardening strategies can take various forms depending on the type of crime. They range from the teaching of self-defense to individuals to making homes utterly resistant to burglary (Corcoran, Zahnow, & Higgs, 2016) . The strategies involve preventing forced entry, preventing destruction, prevention against toxins and airborne agents, against violent burglary among others. The general considerations should be the targeted public, threat level and the surroundings (Felson, 2017) .
To protect against forced entry, the home should be fitted with toughened glass. That is glass-like acrylic or polycarbonate that is hard to break. Latticework or screens should also be used to cover windows. Doors should be fitted with a deadbolt and vertical bolt locks and door anchor hinges with non-removable pins. Fitting better doors shutters, and windows- the window shutters and doors are best and most protective if they are metal doors. Tamper-proof screws in fittings should also be considered (Felson, 2017) . Apart from those, bollards and indirect routes against ramming should be fitted, vertical or small-mesh fencing that cannot be climbed over and roofs that are steeply angled with ridges and parapets and ridges.
To protect against destruction, concrete or steel should be used for picnic tables, benches, and bleachers. The trash receptacles should be bolted to concrete bases; hard rubber or plastic swing sets used, paint that is fire retardant and use of high impact steel or plastic fixtures. Destruction should also be prevented by use of rough play tolerant adventure playgrounds, steel framed seats, use of graffiti repellent spray on graffiti-prone objects and tamper-proof sign hardware and fasteners (Corcoran, Zahnow, & Higgs, 2016) .
Alarms are also useful as early warning signs of action force and for quick response to burglary (Miles-Johnson, Mazerolle, Pickering, & Smith, 2018) . The use of detectors, closable air vents, filter systems, unreachable air intakes and emergency forced air circulation are vital in the prevention of air toxins and air-borne agents that offenders may use to help ease their work of burglary.
References
Corcoran, J., Zahnow, R., & Higgs, G. (2016). Using the routine activity theory to inform a conceptual understanding of the geography of fire events. Geoforum , 75 , 180-185.
Felson, M. (2017). Linking criminal choices, routine activities, informal control, and criminal outcomes. In The reasoning criminal (pp. 119-128). Routledge.
Miles-Johnson, T., Mazerolle, L., Pickering, S., & Smith, P. (2018). Police perceptions of prejudice: How police awareness training influences the capacity of police to assess prejudiced motivated crime. Policing and Society , 28 (6), 730-745.
