Routine precautions take many forms. They include locking doors, securing valuables, advising children, buying homes in safe neighborhoods, purchasing alarms, and employing security guards. Technological development has greatly assisted the increased reliance on routine precautions by developing the breathalyzer, electronic personal identification numbers, caller identification systems, and photo radar. Formal and informal social controls focus on the offender, whereas routine precautions focus on the situation. However, routine precautions do not always represent the best forms of situational crime prevention. The distinction between routine precautions and situational crime prevention is important for both theory and practice. Some methods by which society can encourage to follow the routine precautions they have in mind include formal social controls, informal supervision, signs and instructions, product design to facilitate routine precautions, and design to improve natural surveillance. Increasing knowledge of the distinction between situational prevention and routine precautions will assist in moving citizens as far as possible from ineffective and counterproductive methods toward those that work at minimal cost. The most efficient way to apply situational prevention may be to work with organizations rather than individuals and use a scientific, public health approach rather than the largely philosophical approach from which criminology emerged. Notes and 25 references