Breaking Rules: The Social and Situational Dynamics of Young People's Urban Crime (original) (raw)

Breaking Rules is a highly ambitious book. As indicated in the subtitle to the volume, the overarching objective is to explain the social and situational dynamics of young people ' s involvement in crime. The research enterprise is predicated upon a key epistemological premise, namely, that a cogent scientifi c explanation of any phenomenon must be grounded in an understanding of causal mechanisms. Moreover, such an understanding ultimately requires the rigorous application of sound theory. The research reported in the book is guided by a relatively new theory in criminology-Situational Action Theory (SAT). SAT represents an attempt to integrate two fundamental ' divides ' in criminological theorizing and research: person-oriented and environmentoriented approaches. The core principle of SAT is that crime is ultimately the outcome of certain ' kinds of people ' being exposed to certain ' kinds of situations '. Breaking Rules explicates SAT in detail and assesses hypotheses derived from it with data from a major data collection effort in England-the Peterborough Adolescent Young Adult Development Study (PADS +). PADS + focuses on a cohort of approximately 700 youths living in the city of Peterborough. The methodology of PADS + is quite innovative, combining interviews with youths and their parents, offi cial data, time-space diaries, and small area community surveys. These methodological techniques are especially well suited to address the core substantive concern of the research-the ways in which personal characteristics and experiences interact with features of the situational environment to increase or decrease the likelihood that criminal acts will be committed. The book is organized into four parts. Part I introduces SAT, describes the methodology of the research and the main concepts and measures, and reports initial fi ndings about the distributions and causes of crime. The basic claim of SAT is that criminal acts are likely to be committed when persons with a relatively high criminal propensity (weak moral inhibitions and a limited capacity to exercise self-control) encounter settings that are highly criminogenic. Criminogenic settings are those ' in which the (perceived) moral norms and their (perceived) levels of enforcement (or lack of enforcement) encourage breaches of rules of conduct (stated in law) … ' (p. 17). The results of the empirical analyses are supportive of SAT, revealing a signifi cant interaction between certain ' kinds of people ' and exposure to ' kinds of situations '. The distinctive feature of this interaction is that ' young people with a low crime propensity are largely situationally resistant to criminogenic infl uences while young people with a high criminal propensity are particularly situationally vulnerable ' (p. 158).