Takeaway thoughts on:
Wikstr̈ om,P.‐O.H.,Oberwittler,D.,Treiber,K.,&Hardie,B.(2012).Breaking
Rules:TheSocialandSituationalDynamicsofYoungPeople'sUrbanCrime.
Oxford,UK:OxfordUniversityPress.
What this book does
1. It presents an integrated theory linking person and surround to crime acts.
The crafting of an integrated theory is something that the best people in criminology have been working
on for many decades. Sir Cyril Burt (1925), one of the most influential delinquency researchers of the
first half of the last century tried to do this in the 1920s. Jim Short (1998), former president of ASC, has
been working on this problem as it applies to gangs since the 1960s. Bob Bursik (2001), another former
president of ASC commented:
One of the most persistent yet elusive goals of the criminological enterprise has been the
development of a ‘full’ perspective that integrates structural, psycho-social, dynamic, and
situational factors into a logically consistent, all-encompassing model of crime ... the
development of such a framework is much easier to advocate than it is to actualize.
A crucial part of that integration has been explaining the dynamics that specifically link together
individuals, the surround, and their crime actions. Their statement of the perception/choice process, along
with the definitions for setting and situation, and the comments about how they interpret the dynamics
behind the person-place interaction effects they observe are all crucial to that integration.
2. The book presents a simultaneously novel and ancient model for understanding how crime acts come
about. Specific attention is given to psychological as well as interpersonal and person-place dynamics.
The book is much clearer than many others about its view of human nature. Further, agency, dynamism,
and contextual influences all get incorporated, as has been advocated by Sampson (1993) and others.
3. It advances ideas on how to frame and test interactionist models of crime. The general theory of crime
is an interactionist theory, about a two-way interaction between low self-control and opportunities
(Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990; Hirschi & Gottfredson, 1993). Routine activity theory started out as a
three-way interactionist model of crime events (or rates) (Cohen & Felson, 1979), then developed into a
six-way interactionist model as it moved closer to control theories (M. Felson, 1995). The authors of SAT
focus on a two way interaction, and describe the specific processes that underpin the observed moderating
effects.
What remains to be done
4. A big problem in community criminology, including place criminology (Weisburd, Groff, & Yang,
2012) and models with person-place dynamics more generally, is figuring out the spatial or ecological
Theories of crime and deviance: Takeaway: Wikstrom et al.
So Wikstr̈ om and colleagues have set for themselves an extremely challenging undertaking. They have
attempted to theoretically develop and empirically test a model that attempts substantial integration.
1
unit of analysis (Weisburd, Bruinsma, & Bernasco, 2009). No theory has nailed this down yet (Taylor,
2015).
SAT helps us get a lot closer, but there are still issues. Messner (2014) puts it this way:
... the feature of the environment that is theorized to be central to the perception-choice process
underlying crime is the moral context of the ‘ setting ’ , with the setting defined as ‘ the part of
the environment that, at any given moment in time, is accessible to a person through his or her
senses ’ (p. 15). The researchers have no information on immediate settings and must use
characteristics of territorial units (output areas) to proxy settings. There is thus appreciable
‘slippage’ between the measurement of exposure to a criminogenic environment and the
theoretical concept.
SAT’s approach is that the fundamental unit is not a geographical place, but a person-in-setting unit.
Unless we all start strapping GoPro cameras onto our research participants, and coding up the video data
that result, it is hard to see how to get a better handle on this than the approach approximated in this book.
5. Time structure of the data needs more attention. Felson (2014) has taken the SAT team to task for not
sorting out temporal ordering issues with their analyses. Whether the issue is as big a one as he suspects
awaits further analyses.
7. A strong inference test (Platt, 1964) with these data would prove extremely informative, contrasting the
ability of SAT vs. some other theory to predict offending. Whether the PADS+ data have sufficient
coverage of constructs from a competing theory becomes an interesting question.
8. Thinking about the ecological side of these results, which we have skipped over here, there is an
interesting confluence between these findings and crime pattern theory (P. Brantingham, Glässer,
Jackson, & Vajihollahi, 2009; P. J. Brantingham & Brantingham, 1984; P. L. Brantingham &
Brantingham, 1993a, 1993b, 1995, 1999, 2008). It would be interesting to rigorously test whether the
person x place dynamics here actually underpin the emergence/presence of crime attractors and crime
generators described in crime pattern theory.
9. The same can be said for SAT and hot spots (Sherman, Gartin, & Buerger, 1989). Do these same SAT
dynamics underpin the emergence/generation of hot spots of crime?
References
Brantingham, P., Glässer, U., Jackson, P., & Vajihollahi, M. (2009). Modeling Criminal Activity in
Urban Landscapes. In N. Memon, J. David Farley, D. Hicks & T. Rosenorn (Eds.), Mathematical
Methods in Counterterrorism (pp. 9-31). Vienna: Springer.
Brantingham, P. J., & Brantingham, P. L. (1984). Patterns in Crime. New York: Collier Macmillan.
Theories of crime and deviance: Takeaway: Wikstrom et al.
6. More work is needed on both neighborhood selection effects, which Wikstr̈ om and colleagues call
social selection, and individual-level selection, which they call self-selection. Selection effects are in
general a big problem in lots of social science areas (Tienda, 1991). They are extremely challenging to
sort out (Taylor, 2015). Some preliminary work with the PADS+ data suggests that even after controlling
for self-selection effects, propensity x criminogeneity exposure still affects offending.
2
Theories of crime and deviance: Takeaway: Wikstrom et al.
Brantingham, P. L., & Brantingham, P. J. (1993a). Environment, routine, and situation: Toward a pattern
theory of crime. In R. V. Clarke & M. Felson (Eds.), Routine Activity and Rational Choice (Vol.
5, pp. 259-294). New Brunswick: Transaction publishers.
Brantingham, P. L., & Brantingham, P. J. (1993b). Nodes, paths, and edges: Considerations on the
complexity of crime and the physical environment. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 13, 328.
Brantingham, P. L., & Brantingham, P. J. (1995). Criminality of place: Crime generators and crime
attractors. European Journal on Crime Policy and Research, 3(3), 5-26.
Brantingham, P. L., & Brantingham, P. J. (1999). Theoretical model of crime hot spot generation. Studies
on Crime and Crime Prevention, 8(1), 7-26.
Brantingham, P. L., & Brantingham, P. J. (2008). The Rules of crime pattern theory. In R. Wortley & L.
G. Mazerolle (Eds.), Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis. Devon, UK: Willan
Publishing.
Bursik, R. J., Jr. (2001). The Unfolding of criminal events within neighborhood contexts. In R. F. Meier,
L. Kennedy & R. Sacco (Eds.), The Process and Structure of Crime: Criminal Events and Crime
Analysis (Advances in Criminological Theory, Volume 9) (pp. 197-212). New Brunswick, NJ:
Transaction Publishers.
Burt, S. C. (1925). The young delinquent. London: University of London Press.
Cohen, L. E., & Felson, M. (1979). Social change and crime rate trends: A Routine activity approach.
American Sociological Review, 44, 588-608.
Felson, M. (1995). Those who discourage crime. In J. E. Eck & D. Weisburd (Eds.), Crime and Place
(pp. 53-66). Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press.
Felson, M. (2014). Breaking rules: the social and situational dynamics of young people’s urban crime.
Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 25(2), 254-258. doi: 10.1080/10511253.2014.895497
Gottfredson, M., & Hirschi, T. (1990). A General Theory of Crime. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Hirschi, T., & Gottfredson, M. (1993). Testing the General-Theory of Crime - Commentary. Journal of
Research in Crime and Delinquency, 30(1), 47-54.
Messner, S. F. (2014). REVIEW: Breaking rules. Security Journal. doi:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/sj.2013.5
Platt, J. R. (1964). Strong inference. Science, 146(3642), 347-353.
Sampson, R. J. (1993). Linking Time and Place - Dynamic Contextualism and the Future of
Criminological Inquiry. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 30(4), 426-444.
Sherman, L. W., Gartin, P., & Buerger, M. E. (1989). Hot Spots of predatory crime: Routine activities
and the criminology of place. Criminology, 27(1), 27-55.
Short, J. F. (1998). The Level of explanation problem revisited: The American Society of Criminology
1997 Presidential Address. Criminology, 36(1), 3-36. doi: 10.1111/j.1745-9125.1998.tb01238.x
Taylor, R. B. (2015). Community Criminology. New York: New York University Press.
Tienda, M. (1991). Poor people in poor places: Deciphering neighborhood effects on poverty outcomes.
In J. Huber (Ed.), Macro-micro Linkages in Sociology (pp. 244-262). Newbury Park: Sage.
Weisburd, D., Bruinsma, G. J. N., & Bernasco, W. (2009). Units of analysis in geographic criminology:
Historical development, critical issues, and open questions. In D. Weisburd, W. Bernasco & G. J.
N. Bruinsma (Eds.), Putting Crime in Its Place: Units of Analysis in Geographic Criminology
(pp. 3-34). New York: Springer.
Weisburd, D., Groff, E. R., & Yang, S.-M. (2012). The Criminology of Place: Street Segments and Our
Understanding of the Crime Problem. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
3