Page 13 - Flipbook: Sociology Shortcuts Issue 5: Situational Action Theory

The Study

Wikstrom’s longitudinal study followed a randomly selected sample of 716
young people, aged 12 – 16, living in and around the English city of
Peterborough over a period of 13 years (roughly 2002 – 2015). One of the
unique features of the study was that, in line with Wikstrom’s focus on the
idea of situational action, it was interested in studying the participants as
both individual actors (their sense of moral purpose in particular) and
the social environments (situational settings) in which they lived and

General Findings: the crime paradox THE CRIME PARADOX

We referred earlier to the paradox at the heart of our understanding of
youth crime, namely that while certain types of routine street crime are
committed by socially-disadvantaged working class youth, social
disadvantage is not, in itself, a simple cause of crime and criminality. Data
from the Peterborough Study is instructive in this respect:

• Around one-third of the teenagers in the sample committed no crimes
at all over the period of the study.

• The vast majority of teens committed a very small number of minor
crimes – at most one or two a year – over the period in question.

• A small group, 4% of the sample, committed around 50% of the
crime detailed in the study. This group were also responsible for the
majority of the more-serious offences, such as burglary, robbery and car
theft. This group also tended to commit a far wider range of crimes than
their peers, indicative of a much greater level of commitment to
criminality.

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