Wikström’s research has provided major insights into the role parents play in preventing juvenile crime. His Situational Action Theory, based on an extensive decade-long study of over 700 families, refines and supports the conclusions previously drawn by Hirschi and Widom.

Extensive research on children

Research conducted by Wikström, the first Swedish criminologist to be awarded the Stockholm Prize in Criminology, provides the most detailed evidence of the dynamic process children use in their relationships with parents, other relatives, and peers.

During a ten-year study of 716 families in the ethnically mixed city of Peterborough, England, Wikström developed his theory by engaging with the data. In his study he measured young people’s daily behaviour – where they were, with whom, and in what criminogenic or morally dangerous environments. This allowed Wikström to test predictions about crime in new ways. His data included exposure to morally dangerous situations, such as young people’s moral convictions and propensity to commit crime.

Moral choice

Wikström’s theory is an integrative criminological theory that explains why people commit crime by combining the morality of the individual with the situation that the individual is in. Crime is thus the result of a moral choice in a specific situation, rather than just a consequence of social structures or personality traits. With this as a starting point, different prevention strategies are being developed.