This article assesses the association between national welfare state regimes and public insecurities about crime across Europe. The point of departure is the idea that fear of crime expresses not just insecurities about safety but also broader societal anxieties. A multi-level analysis of respondents in 23 countries sampled in the 2004-05 European Social Survey finds a strong relationship between insecurities about crime and national levels of social expenditure and decommodification of social welfare policy. Some social protection measures seem more effective in preventing fear of crime than others, especially public non-monetary support for children and families which strengthen the individual's capacity to cope with problems on their own. We conclude with the notion that state-level social protections buffer the development of widespread fear of crime by mitigating various social and economic fears.

This work provides an overview of the current state of research on Situational Action Theory (SAT). Studies that have examined core propositions of SAT within the period 2006 to 2015 are reviewed. The principal aim of this narrative review is to answer the following four questions: (1) Which hypotheses of SAT have been put to the test in empirical enquiries? (2) What does the empirical evidence say about these propositions? (3) Which statements of the theory have received little attention? (4) What are the consequences of the results for future enquiries? An overall finding of this review is that numerous studies have tested selected propositions of the theory using different methods, data and statistical procedures. A majority of these studies found some support for the hypotheses tested, but there are also a few studies that did not back key assumptions of the theory. The reasons for the divergent results are discussed.

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Situational Action Theory (SAT), a recently developed explanation of criminal conduct, is becoming increasingly studied. Hitherto, however, nearly all tests of the theory and its hypotheses have been based on samples of adolescents or young adults. Studies drawing on the older population have been missing so far. This work addresses the interplay of moral beliefs and the ability to exercise self-control in crime causation among respondents aged 50 years and over. In line with SAT and the results obtained previously for young people, our analyses show that self-control ability affects offending among older adults too, particularly when personal morality is weak.

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Although shoplifting is one of the crimes with the smallest gender gap among all offense types, most studies still conclude that males steal from shops more frequently than females. The roots of the gendered distribution of shoplifting have not yet been satisfactorily explained. This work investigates whether Situational Action Theory can account for males' greater involvement in shoplifting compared to females and if the propensity-exposure interaction that is at the heart of the theory applies to both genders. Results from a large-scale student survey conducted in Austria suggest that Situational Action Theory generalizes to both genders and that it is well suited to explain why males are more likely to shoplift than females.

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