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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to outline Situational Action Theory (SAT) and its Developmental Ecological Action Model (DEA model) as applied to the explanation of criminal careers. The DEA model of SAT was first presented by Wikström in 2005, [ 34 ]), and subsequently refined in Wikström and Treiber in 2018, [ 43 ]), and is further elaborated in this paper. Methods This paper provides a theoretical analysis of the role of crime causation in the explanation of criminal careers and pathways in crime. The central argument is that if we want to explain stability and change in people’s crime involvement we first have to understand what factors and processes move people to commit acts of crime. Only then can we adequately assess what factors and processes are involved in the explanation of criminal careers and people’s differential pathways (trajectories) in crime. Results The DEA model of SAT address some of the main limitations of current dominant explanatory approaches in Developmental and Life-Course (DLC) Criminology [ 39 ], and champions a general, dynamic and mechanism-based account of the causes of crime [ 38 ], and the drivers of criminal careers [ 47 ]. It integrates and extends key insights from two great but poorly amalgamated traditions in the study of crime and its causes: the individual/developmental and ecological/environmental traditions. It provides a new approach to the study and explanation of crime and criminal careers with implications for how we approach the problem of crime prevention policy and practise.

The study of sanctioning effects has a rich history in deterrence and labeling theory. Most analyses have only used official data to study these effects. Yet, some more recent studies indicate that it is necessary to investigate self-reported as well as official data since it appears that sanctioning has differential effects on self-reported delinquency and formal control interventions. The current study contributes to this small body of research by using propensity score matching to analyze panel data from an ongoing English (Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Developmental Study) and a German (Crime in the modern City) study. We estimated average treatment effects of system contacts on both reoffending and subsequent contacts for juveniles living in Peterborough (ENG) and Duisburg (GER). Our findings are that (1) although official contacts have no substantial effects on the prevalence or versatility of reoffending, (2) they substantially increase the risk of a future formal contact. These results were almost identical at both sites, which may indicate a more general finding on the effects of formal control interventions.

This paper presents a study of the relationship between type of neighborhood socioeconomic context, individual characteristics (individuals are classified by a set of selected key measures of individual dispositions and social situation) and serious male juvenile offending (prevalence and early and late onsets) in the city of Pittsburgh. The analytical strategy may best be described as holistic and epidemiological. The key research question is whether onset and prevalence of juvenile serious offending is invariant by neighborhood socioeconomic context when controlling for individual sets of risk and protective characteristics. The results do not support the notion that neighborhood socioeconomic context has any greater direct impact on the early onset of serious offending. However, neighborhood socioeconomic context appears to have a direct impact on the late onset of offending for those juveniles who score high on protective factors, or who have a balanced mix of risk and protective factors. No support was found for the notion that individual risk characteristics and neighborhood risk are additive. Children and adolescents with high scores on risk characteristics offend in serious crime at a similar high rate regardless of the socioeconomic context of their neighborhood.

Our current understanding of the role of the social environment in crime causation is at best rudimentary. Guided by the theoretical framework of Situational Action Theory, and using data from the ESRC financed Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study (PADS+), this paper aims to propose how we can better theorise and study the role of the social environment, particularly the person and place interaction, in crime causation. We will introduce, and illustrate the usefulness of, a space—time budget methodology as a means of capturing people's exposure to settings and describing their activity fields. We will suggest and demonstrate that, combined with a small area community survey and psychometric measures of individual characteristics, a space—time budget is a powerful tool for advancing our knowledge about the role of the social environment, and its interaction with people's crime propensity, in crime causation. Our unique data allows us to study the convergence in time and space of crime propensity, criminogenic exposure and crime events. As far as we are aware, such an analysis has never before been carried out. The findings show that there are (a) clear associations between young people's activity fields and their exposure to criminogenic settings, (b) clear associations between their exposure to criminogenic settings and their crime involvement, and, crucially, (c) that the influence of criminogenic exposure depends on a person's crime propensity. Having a crime-averse morality and strong ability to exercise self-control appears to make young people practically situationally immune to the influences of criminogenic settings, while having a crime-prone morality and poor ability to exercise self-control appears to make young people situationally vulnerable to the influences of criminogenic settings.

Our current understanding of the role of the social environment in crime causation is at best rudimentary. Guided by the theoretical framework of Situational Action Theory, and using data from the ESRC financed Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study (PADS+), this paper aims to propose how we can better theorise and study the role of the social environment, particularly the person and place interaction, in crime causation. We will introduce, and illustrate the usefulness of, a space-time budget methodology as a means of capturing people's exposure to settings and describing their activity fields. We will suggest and demonstrate that, combined with a small area community survey and psychometric measures of individual characteristics, a space-time budget is a powerful tool for advancing our knowledge about the role of the social environment, and its interaction with people's crime propensity, in crime causation. Our unique data allows us to study the convergence in time and space of crime propensity, criminogenic exposure and crime events. As far as we are aware, such an analysis has never before been carried out. The findings show that there are (a) clear associations between young people's activity fields and their exposure to criminogenic settings, (b) clear associations between their exposure to criminogenic settings and their crime involvement, and, crucially, (c) that the influence of criminogenic exposure depends on a person's crime propensity. Having a crime-averse morality and strong ability to exercise self-control appears to make young people practically situationally immune to the influences of criminogenic settings, while having a crime-prone morality and poor ability to exercise self-control appears to make young people situationally vulnerable to the influences of criminogenic settings. Adapted from the source document.

Predictors of repeated violent delinquency across ages 13-19 were investigated in a longitudinal sample of 420 urban adolescent males living in high- compared to low-socioeconomic status (SES) neighborhoods. Adolescents in high-SES neighborhoods were significantly less likely than their counterparts in low-SES neighborhoods to engage in serious and violent delinquency.

In this paper, we argue that quantitative empirical research to explain and predict criminal and related behaviour can benefit greatly from explicit theories of action linking individual and contextual factors in the causation of crime. Such theories foster a systematic selection of causal variables for data collection and hypothesis testing instead of a more indiscriminate accumulation of ‘risk factor’ correlates. Moreover, action theory encourages statistical modelling of crime causation beyond the most common linear regression. This paper illustrates both points by estimating two empirical models – a conventional logistic model and a Rasch model – on scenario response data concerning youth violence. The findings of this study show that the extent to which young people indicate a violent response to a provocation is dependent on their (law relevant) morality and ability to exercise self-control as well as the deterrent qualities (monitoring) of the setting.

Some preliminary findings from a cross-national comparative study of violent crimes, as reported by police in Edinburgh Scotland and Stockholm, are presented. A comparison between Edinburgh and Stockholm of the similarities and/or dissimilarities in the rate, structure and urban patterns of violent crimes is also offeered.

Situational action theory (SAT) explains why crime happens, and more broadly why people follow and break common rules of conduct. SAT proposes that the causes of human actions are situational. The theory further proposes that humans are fundamentally rule‐guided actors and that their responses to motivators are essentially an outcome of the interaction between their moral propensities and the moral norms of the settings in which they take part. SAT explicates the key situational factors that influence the process that moves people to engage in acts of crime. The elements of the situational model are the person, the setting, the situation, and action. This chapter presents some selected findings that illustrate the importance of the interaction between crime propensity and criminogenic exposure in crime causation. It highlights that time concentrations in space and time are an outcome of the rate of the spatio‐temporal convergence of crimeprone people and criminogenic settings.