The Situational offender reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Situational offender

In the study of crime, a situational offender is a person who commits crimes only when in an environment which permits or encourages those acts.

This is common in sex crimes; see situational sexual behavior.

Another example is violent crime. Many violent criminals are only violent in certain contexts. For example, they may be violent towards their families but not in the outside world, or vice versa. Some violent criminals are only violent in very specific contexts (for example, football hooliganism) and do not commit violence outside of that context.

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