Theorem-Driven Crime Process Research Programme

This article formulates the Theorem-Driven Crime Process Research Programme as a cumulative field-level architecture for criminological theory, empirical research, prevention analysis, and policy diagnosis. The programme is anchored in the theorem-driven account of crime as a mediated, gated, and path-dependent process. Its analytical backbone distinguishes four primary domains: criminogenic exposure, social mediation, gated realization, and temporal persistence. These domains are treated as analytically distinct but interrelated levels through which crime may be generated, translated into action, and reproduced over time. The article develops a programme architecture that separates theorematic claims, processual dimensions, operational indicators, empirical designs, diagnostic judgments, and cumulative comparison. It argues that theorem-driven criminology becomes empirically usable only when these layers remain analytically distinct. The programme is therefore method-plural rather than tied to one mandatory empirical workflow. The programme organizes its constituent work hierarchically: the core theory of the crime process; prevention fit and prevention misalignment; criminal policy and policy design; youth crime and antisocial organization; empirical applications and theorem-assessment studies. Within this architecture, prevention is analysed in terms of fit between an intervention’s operative mechanism and the processual level at which the relevant crime problem is generated, sustained, or reproduced. Weak outcomes may therefore reflect design failure, implementation failure, or processual misalignment rather than one undifferentiated category of prevention failure. The article also distinguishes among foundational theorem papers, translational papers, empirical applications, theorem-assessment studies, bridge modules, supporting theorem families, and method-support components. This modular structure allows adjacent work on recognition, buffering, institutional viability, access circulation, organizational stability, structural availability, and finite human load-bearing to support the programme without displacing its crime-process core. The contribution is not a new total theory of crime, but a scope-disciplined and cumulative research architecture through which diverse criminological theories, empirical designs, intervention studies, and policy analyses can be ordered within a shared processual framework.