Does Contact With the Justice System Influence Situational Action Theory’s Causes of Crime?

• In Event: The Role of Criminal Justice Experiences in the Life Course: Cross-National Perspectives

Abstract

Objective: To explore why system contact often has no crime-preventing effect, the current study examined the effects of juvenile justice contact on Situational Action Theory’s causes of crime, including personal morals, deviant peer associations, and detection risk perception.
Data & Methods: The analysis was based on a sample of English (n = 710; Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Developmental Study) and German (n = 3,411; Crime in the modern City study) juveniles. Propensity score matching was applied to estimate whether the lenient system contacts influenced the causes of crime in the year after the contact.
Results: The estimated effects of official contact were mostly insignificant and relatively small. The few significant estimates in the English sample suggest that official contact weakly increased deviant peer associations and decreased feelings of moral guilt.
Conclusion: Overall, the results indicate that official contacts may have no crime-preventing effect because they do not affect (Germany), or only weakly (England) affect the causes of crime as postulated in Situational Action Theory.

Author

• Florian Kaiser, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law