Abstract
The core argument of Situational Action Theory (SAT) is that people ultimately commit acts of crime because they find them viable and acceptable in the circumstance (and there is no relevant and strong enough deterrent) or because they fail to act in accordance with their own personal morals (i.e., fail to exercise self-control) in circumstances when externally pressurised to act otherwise. Situational Action Theory is a general, dynamic and mechanism-based theory of crime and its causes that analyzes crime as moral actions. It proposes to explain all kinds of crime and rule-breaking more broadly (hence general), stresses the importance of the person-environment interaction and its changes (hence dynamic), and focuses on identifying key basic explanatory processes involved in crime causation (hence mechanistic). This chapter gives an overview of the basic assumptions, central concepts and key explanatory propositions of Situational Action Theory.
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Notes
- 1.
I do not argue that all major traditional criminological theories suffer from all of these problems, but that most suffer from some of them and none addresses and integrates all of them in an effective way.
- 2.
The conceptualisation of ‘situation’ in SAT differs from what is common in criminological theory, where the concept of situation typically refers to the immediate environment (for an in-depth discussion of situational theories in criminology, see Wikström & Treiber, 2016a).
- 3.
Harré and Secord (1972) makes a strong argument for people as essentially rule-guided creatures.
- 4.
It is of course possible to go even further back in a causal chain and, for example, talk about (and analyse) the ‘causes of the causes of the causes’ which would concern the factors and processes that, for example, influence the factors and processes that influence the development and change of people’s crime propensities.
- 5.
A particular problem with orthodox rational choice theory, as highlighted by Popper (1983: xx), is that the idea that “all human actions are egoistic, motivated by self-interest” is a theory that “with all its variants, is not falsifiable: no example of an altruistic action can refute the view that there was an egoistic motive hidden behind it”. SAT assumes that people display (between and within) variation in the extent to which their actions are driven by self-interest.
- 6.
A place is a geographic location and its immediate environment, which includes other people present, the activities going on and its physical layout. SAT differentiates between the concepts of ‘place’ and ‘setting’ where the latter refers to ‘the part of the environment an actor at any given movement can access with her or his senses’. However, in this chapter I shall use the concepts of ‘place’ and ‘setting’ as interchangeable, both referring to ‘a geographical location and its immediate environment that the actor can access with her or his senses’.
- 7.
Executive functions are higher-order cognitive functions—based on inherent capabilities and their training—associated with purposeful behaviour, including (but not limited to) selective attention, anticipation, goal formation, working memory, self-monitoring, inhibition, conceptualization of time, abstract reasoning and adaptive shifting (for details, see, Wikström and Treiber, 2007).
- 8.
For example, temporary impairments as a consequence of the influences of an intake of alcohol or narcotic drugs (which in some cases may turn into permanent impairments as a consequence of long-term abuse).
- 9.
Interestingly, it has recently been claimed by Gottfredson (2011) that morality is part of self-control arguing that “a belief in moral rules” are at the center of self-control since “once a part of self-control, the belief that force and fraud in pursuit of self-interest are wrong tends to limit their use” (p. 135). However, SAT insists that it is crucial analytically to differentiate between personal morals and ability to exercise self-control since they play different roles in the action process and that the former (personal morals) is the more fundamental influence on a person’s crime propensity.
- 10.
Other than as a possible reaction and response to others norm-violating smoking behaviour.
- 11.
In this context it should be highlighted that a particular law does not necessarily need to be a moral norm, generally or in a specific setting.
- 12.
Crime is heavily skewed in the population, a small number of people commit a large number of the crimes (e.g., Piquero et al., 2007; Wolfgang et al., 1972; Wikström, 1990; Wikström, Oberwittler, et al., 2012; Wikström, Treiber, et al., 2012), and even the most active offender only spends a small amount of her or his awaken time engaging in acts of crime (Wikström, Oberwittler, et al., 2012; Wikström, Treiber, et al., 2012).
- 13.
This argument has been convincingly made by Mele (2001) in a discussion of the concept of self-control.
- 14.
The empirical analysis Kroneberg and Schultz (2018) present in support of their claim is limited because they lack situational data to effectively explore the role of self-control and deterrence, and their interaction, in the process of choice.
- 15.
With the obvious exception of toddlers and small children who will be dependent on their caregivers agency and preferences.
- 16.
The extent to which particular environmental exposures affect this development is dependent on a person’s stage in the life-course (see, Wikström, 2019).
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Wikström, PO.H. (2019). Situational Action Theory: A General, Dynamic and Mechanism-Based Theory of Crime and Its Causes. In: Krohn, M., Hendrix, N., Penly Hall, G., Lizotte, A. (eds) Handbook on Crime and Deviance. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20779-3_14
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