Analytic Criminology: Mechanisms and Methods in the Explanation of Crime and its Causes

Per-Olof H Wikström,Clemens Kroneberg

doi:10.1146/annurev-criminol-030920-091320

Per-Olof H Wikström, Clemens Kroneberg

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-criminol-030920-091320

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Abstract

Criminology is a smorgasbord of disparate theory and poorly integrated research findings. Theories tend to focus either on people's crime propensity or the criminogenic inducements of environments; rarely are these two main approaches effectively combined in the analysis of crime and its causes. Criminological research often either avoids questions of causation and explanation (e.g., risk factor approach) or is based on research designs that yield highly partial accounts (e.g., place-oriented experimental work). To advance knowledge about crime and its causes and prevention, we argue that there is a need for an analytic criminology that allows key theoretical insights and central empirical findings about people's crime propensities and environments’ criminogenic inducements and their combination to be integrated based on an adequate action theory. In this review, we outline this approach and its main methodological implications and discuss how its focus on why and how questions leads to a characteristic integration of theory development, methods, and research.

Highlights

What can we learn from criminology about why crime happens and what we can do about it? How do we know which theoretical propositions and empirical regularities are relevant and important in the explanation of crime and which can serve as a foundation for crime prevention policy and practice? Criminology is by nature a multidisciplinary subject
Analytic criminology subscribes to the view that in science we do not invent causes and mechanisms, we discover them
According to analytic criminology an adequate scientific explanation may be construed as a theory that (a) clearly defines what is to be explained and identifies the key entities involved in its causation and their relevant and important causal properties; (b) suggests plausible causal processes that link putative causes to their effects and thereby tell us how the outcome is produced; and (c) has testable implications that are consistent with relevant observations, findings from statistical analyses and modeling, and, as much as possible, manipulations that demonstrate relevant changes in hypothesized causal relationships

Summary

INTRODUCTION

What can we learn from criminology about why crime happens and what we can do about it? How do we know which theoretical propositions and empirical regularities are relevant and important in the explanation of crime and which can serve as a foundation for crime prevention policy and practice? Criminology is by nature a multidisciplinary (outcome-defined) subject. According to analytic criminology an adequate scientific explanation may be construed as a theory that (a) clearly defines what is to be explained (the outcome) and identifies the key entities involved in its causation and their relevant and important causal properties; (b) suggests plausible causal processes (mechanisms) that link putative causes to their effects and thereby tell us how the outcome is produced; and (c) has testable implications (empirical expectations) that are consistent with relevant observations (e.g., from ethnographic studies), findings from statistical analyses and modeling, and, as much as possible, manipulations (experiments) that demonstrate relevant changes in hypothesized causal relationships. The combinations between people’s personal morality and the (sensed) moral norms of the setting provide rule guidance as to how to respond to motivators, and people’s ability to exercise self-control and the deterrent qualities of the setting act as potential controls when people deliberate over whether or not to commit an act of crime (e.g., Wikström 2017, pp. 511–13)

A Action

CONCLUSION