Why crime happens: A situational action theory

TLDR: For example, Wikström as discussed by the authors argued that attributes cannot be causes of crime, and pointed out that being male, teenage, or belonging to an ethnic minority does not move anyone to commit a crime.

Abstract: People do not commit crime because, for example, they are male, teenagers or belong to an ethnic minority. Being male, teenage or belonging to an ethnic minority does not move anyone, for example, to steal a CD from a shop, break into a car, burn down a school building or blow up an aircraft. Attributes cannot be causes (e.g. Holland, 1986; Bunge, 2001: 70). Neither do people commit crime because, for example, they are unemployed, have many siblings, a slow resting heart rate, a poor educational record, a particular gene, a mother who smoked during pregnancy, or grew up in public housing. None of these kinds of factors will move a person, for example, to vandalise a fence, sell stolen goods, fraudulently claim benefits or beat up a partner. These kinds of correlates, which appear in their hundreds, are, at best, markers of real causes, although some of them may be implicated when analysing the “causes of the causes” of people’s crimes (Wikström, 2011a). It is easy to agree with the statement by Hedström (2005: 23) that “I do not believe that a view of theories and explanations as lists of statistically relevant factors is conducive to the development of a rigorous body of sociological theory” (see also Wikström, 2004).