Abstract
This chapter explores why people commit crimes. It reveals that there are many competing theories that provide a variety of answers to this question. The chapter reviews and compares the results of research from Western and non‐Western countries, focusing on several theories that seem to have received the most testing in foreign contexts. For the sake of simplicity, these theories are placed in four broad groups: strain (general strain theory (GST)), social learning (social learning theory (SLT)), control, and “other” theories. Several other popular accounts of criminal behavior, such as deterrence, rational choice, and situational action theories, have been more or less extensively tested. In particular, extant cross‐national research has aided in finding out whether sociocultural environments may serve as contingencies for causal processes outlined in theories.