Case Study: Situational Action Theory (SAT)

Situational Action Theory (SAT) Situational Action Theory (SAT) was developed by Wikström and Treiber (2009) as a means to determine why people commit immoral acts. The SAT model is a theory based out of criminology and suggests that people will be more likely to make moral decisions based on the “active fields” in which they live, operate, and are given opportunity to take action (Wikström, Ceccato, Hardie, & Treiber, 2010, p. 55). Wikström and Treiber (2009) postulates that all crime and violent crime are moral actions which are influenced by four key areas; the person, the setting, the situation and action taken as a result of their moral decision thus “all acts of violence can be explained within the general framework of a theory of moral action” (p. 76). SAT takes a generalized approach to explaining why people do or do not break moral rules, including both

Since 2014 these groups have been on the rise with a 40% increase of 142,500 reported crimes since the first six months of 2016 (Kern, 2016). Of greater concern are the obvious increases in terror attacks in the EU, specifically in France, Germany and Belgium, host nations for a majority of the migrant populations. In 2015, Paris experienced the Charlie Hebdo attack and ended with the Paris nightclub attack in which more than 150 were killed and 300 injured. In 2016, there have been a significant increase in terror attacks in Europe. The Brussels Airport bombing, the Nice truck attack as well as knife attacks in Germany. Added to this is the threats of future attacks in statements by ISIS leader Abu Bakar al-Baghdadi, as coalition forces fight to retake key strongholds from the Islamic State, but failed to secure the surrounding areas controlled by ISIS allowing an untold number of IS fighters to escape and enter into the EU with the flow of