UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI



UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI

SCHOOL OF LAW

GPR 200 – CRIMINOLOGY & PENOLOGY

HANDOUT 4

SOCIOLOGICAL POSITIVISM AND ANOMIE THEORIES

Sociologists have long sought to dissociate themselves from the pitfalls of the individualistic approach to crime in which the causes of crime were sought in the individual and little attention was paid to the social context. It did not make a clean break with positivism but provided a challenge to individualist theories of crime. Sociological positivists explained crime as a pathological deviation from the consensus of the social order. It is concerned with the various indicators of social disorganization. It sees a real and progressive threat to the continuance of the consensus of the social order. They believed in measuring these indicators (such as high crime rates, suicide rates, drunkenness etc) as away of identifying the whereabouts of existing and potential trouble spots in society which must be treated, prevented or controlled if serious social disorder is to be avoided.

DURKHEIM ANOMIE, SOCIAL DISORGANISATION THEORY AND MODERNIZATION

DEF: Anomie means a condition or malaise in individuals characterized by an absence of or reduction of standards or values. It implies a social unrest or chaos. The word comes from Greek ‘a’ without and “namos” law contemporary English understanding of the word is ‘norm’ and therefore “normlessness” to reflect a situation of anarchy. Theorists use anomie to mean a reaction against or a retreat from the regulatory social control of society. (1858 – 1917).

Emile Durkheim was the founding father of academic sociology in France. He was primarily concerned with the study of archaic societies and especially with primitive religion and social organization. Durkheim agreed with Freud that human beings were not really human until they had been socialized. He saw socialization and the development of conscience as necessary for individual well- being. The lack of socialization and conscience leads to conflict between the individual and society.

He viewed inequality as natural and inevitable human conditions that are not associated with social maladies such as crimes unless there is also a breakdown at social norms. He called breakdown anomie, which occurs as a result of rapid social changes accompanying the modernization process Durkheim focused, or society and its organization and development. His theories are complex but his influence on criminology has been great.

He has been called one of the best known and least understood major thinkers. He lived during the two revolutions: French and industrial, which had great impact on human thoughts and values. Sociology had also just been developed by Auguste Comte, as part of a more general effort to construct a rational society out of the wings of the traditional one. Sociologist, wanted to mastermind ‘social regeneration’ through re – establishment of social solidarity Durkheim studied social sciences and sociology. He presented his first major analysis of the process of social charge in his book, The division of labour in society.

He saw society as divided into mechanical and organic society. In its mechanical form, each group is relatively isolated from all other social groups and is self sufficient. In organic society, different segments of society depend on each other in highly organized division of Labour. Social solidarity is no longer based on the uniformity of the individuals but in the diversity of the functions of the parts of the society. No society was totally one or the other all being in state of progress between the organic and mechanical state.

The law plays an essential role in maintaining the social solidarity of each of these two types of societies but in different ways. In mechanical society, law functions to enforce the uniformity of the members of the social group, and thus is oriented towards repressing any deviation from the norm of the time. In the organic society law functions to regulate the interaction of the various parts of society, and provide restitution in cases of wrongful transactions.

He argues that to the extent that a society remains mechanical crime is normal in the sense that a society without crime would be pathologically over controlled. As society develops towards organic form it possible for a pathological state, (anomie) to occur, and such a state would produce a variety of social, maladies such as crime.

Crime as normal in Mechanical societies.

Mechanical societies have totality of social likeness. Durkheim called this the “collective conscience uniformity” found in all culture. But each also has a degree of diversity in the form of individual differences among its members. Societies will pressure for uniformity against this diversity in varying degree and forms. The strongest form is criminal sanction, while the weakest form covers matters considered as morally reprehensible or detestable or deviant.

Society cannot be formed without sacrifices (price of membership). But these demands are constructed so that it is inevitable that a certain number of people will not fulfill them. The number is large but not too much so that the rest of the society feels a sense of moral superiority and see the rest criminals as inferior. This superiority is the primary source of social solidarity punishment of criminals also plays a role in the maintenance of the social solidarity.

Crime is itself normal in society because there is no clearly marked dividing line between behaviour considered criminal and those considered morally reprehensible. He believed that even in a society of saints, faults can appear. Thus society without crime is impossible. New behaviour will always be placed in the crime category. Crime is thus inevitable because of there is an evitable diversity of behaviour in society.

The abnormal or pathological state of society would be one in which there was the crime. If there is no crime there will be also progressive change, as it is introduced by opposing the constraints of the collective conscience and those who do this all frequency declared to be criminals crime is the price society pays for the possibility of progress (e.g. Jesus and Gandhi were considered criminals) he explains that individuals growth cannot occur in a child unless it is possible for that child to misbehave.

The child is punished for misbehavior and no one want the child to misbehave. But a client who never did anything wrong would be pathologically over controlled. Eliminating the misbehavior would also eliminate the possibility of independent growth. In this sense the child’s misbehavior is the price that must be paid for the possibility of personal development.

He concludes that from this viewpoint, the fundamental facts of criminality present themselves in an entirely new light. Contrary to current ideas, the criminal no longer seems a totally unsociable being, a sort of parasitic element a strange body introduced into the midst of society, on the contrary he plays a definite role in social life. Crime for its part must no longer be conceived as an evil that cannot be too much suppressed.

There is no occasion for self congratulation when the crime rate drops noticeably below the average level, for we may be certain that this apparent progress is associated with some social disorder.

Anomie as a pathological state in organic societies

To the extent that a society is mechanical, it derives its solidarity from pressure for conformity against the diversity of some of its members. The criminal behaviour is a normal and necessary part of this pressure. But to the extent that a society is organic the function of law is to regulate the interactions of the various parts of the whole. If this regulation is inadequate there can result a variety of social maladies including crime. Durkheim called this state of inadequate regulation, anomie.

Durkheim made three arguments about crime during the process of transition from mechanical of organic societies.

1. A greater variety of behaviours would be tolerated.

2. Punishment could become less violent as their purpose changed from repression to restitution.

3. There would be a fast expansion of functional law to regulate the interaction s of the emerging organic society.

Regarding point one, Wolfgang (1977) stated that the American culture and western society, generally, was experiencing an expansion of acceptability of deviance and a corresponding contraction of what they define as crime. Western societies are losing their morals. (Anomie theories attempt to explain the occurrence not merely of crime but also deviance and disorder. Deviance different in moral or social standards from what is considered normal) Studies by Neumann and Berger (1988) found no support for the argument that increases in property crimes were caused by the change from traditional to modern values, and therefore question the continued dominance of Durkheim theory in explaining the link between modernization and crime. They suggest that much more attention be paid to the role of economic inequality in this process as opposed to Durkheims emphasis on the breakdown of traditional values Durkheims influence has been extremely broad in criminology and sociology.

The concept of anomie was developed in Durkheim’s classic study Suicide. He analysed suicide rates and tried to explain why these increased during times of economic growth as well as during depressions. He made a point that we cannot understand why suicide is a recurrent feature of modern life by means of a study of individual cases. Only a sociological analysis of rates can illuminate the social elements in suicide. Durkheim’s emphasis was on considering social integration and the person’s ties to society.

Its primary impact was that he focused attention on the role that social forces play in determining human conduct at a time when the dominant thin king held either that people freely choose their courses of action or that behavior was determined by inner forces of biology and psychology.

This was a radical view at the time. There is now considerable evidence that the basic patterns of crime found in the modern world can only be explained by a theory that focuses on modernization as a fundamental factor.

THE ECOLOGY OF CRIME

The Chicago school of Human Ecology (Department of sociology) at the University of Chicago 1920) attempted to pinpoint the environmental factors associated with crime, and to determine the relationship among those factors. They focused on rapid changes in the neighbourhood unlike Durkheim who focuses on rapid changes in entire societies) Their procedure involved correlating the characteristics of each neighbourhood with the crime rates of that neighbourhood.

The Theory of Human Ecology.

Ecology in original meaning is a branch of biology in which plants and animals are studied in their relationships to each other and to the natural habitat. Plant life and animal life are seen to as an intricately complicated whole, a way of life in which each part depends on almost every other part for some aspect of its existence. Organisms in their natural habitat exist in an ongoing balance of nature, a dynamic equilibrium in which each individual must struggle to survive. Ecologists study this way of interrelationship and interdependence in an attempt to discover the forces that define the activities of each part.

Human communities particularly organized around a free marked economy could be seen to resemble this biotic state in nature each individual struggles for his or her survival in an interrelated, mutually depend community. The law of survival for the fittest applies here as well.

Robert Park (1968)

He proposed a parallel between the distributions of plant life in nature in societies. He viewed a city not merely as a geographic phenomenon, but as a kind of super organism that had organic unity derived from the symbiotic interrelationships of the people who lived within it. Within this super organism there were many natural areas where different people lived e.g. “china town” “little Italy” or “the black belt”.

Other natural areas included individuals in certain income or occupation of groups or industrial or business areas. Others areas were cut out of from the rest of the city by rivers, highways or unused space. A symbiotic relationship existed among people within a natural area but also among the areas outside the city. Each area played a part in the life of the city as a whole.

Through certain processes the balance of nature in a given areas might change through invasion dominance and succession such as American invasion of territory of native America, or cultural or ethnic groups taking even entire neighbourhoods by shifting into it, one after the other. These cities expand radically from their center in patterns of concentric circles each moving gradually outwards.

Burgess (1928) describes these as Concentric circles as zones. Zone 1 is the central business district; zone 2 is the area immediately around it and is the oldest section of the city. It is continuously invaded by business and industry expanding from zone 1. The houses in zone 2 are deteriorating and continue to do so. It is usually the most undesirable part of the city and therefore habituated by the poorest and recent immigrants. Zone 3 is relatively modest homes and apartment of families escaping deteriorating zone 2. Next is zone 4 which consists of residential single-family houses and expensive apartment. Beyond these limits are, the suburban areas, zone 5 which constitutes the commuter zone. Each of these zones growing and thus gradually moving outwards into the territory occupied by the next zone in a process of invasion dominance and succession.

Parks and his colleague used this model to study the city of Chicago and its problem. They attempted to discover the processes to by which the biotic balance and the social equilibrium are maintained once they are achieved, and the process by which the biotic balance and social equilibrium are disturbed and the transaction is made from one relatively stable order to another.

RESEARCH IN THE DELINQUENCY AREA IN CHICAGO

Shaw C. (1929) devised a strategy based on the theory of human ecology to study the process by which Juvenile delinquents detached from convectional groups. He saw them as normal human beings and believed that their illegal activities were somehow bound up with their environment. He therefore analyzed the characteristics of the neighbourhood that according to the notice records had known delinquents.

He compiled histories from individual delinquents to see how they related with their environment. He found that the most neighbourhoods with most delinquents are immediate near heavy industrial areas (zone 2), poor housing, and industrial invasion, had poor physical status. The highest numbers of delinquent were found in areas of lowest economic status and high rates of infant death, diseases and insanity.

The population composition of high delinquency areas had higher concentration of foreign born and Africa American heads of families. These are the populations that are mostly remained in the inner areas of zone 2. The high delinquency rate in this area was associated with the geographical location rather than race or ethnicity or nationality.

Further he found that delinquents are largely not different from other persons in intelligence, physical condition and personality traits, but that in the high delinquency areas convectional tradition, neighborhood institutions, public opinion and control systems were largely disintegrated. Therefore children grew up in a social world where delinquency was an accepted and appropriate form of conduct. The neighborhood also provided many opportunities for delinquent activities, which began at an early age as part of play activities of the street.

These play activities were transmitted from older boys to younger boys in continuity of tradition (e.g. shoplifting and carjacking). The normal methods of official control could not stop this process Shaw concluded that the problem of delinquency and other social problems are closely related to the process of invasion dominance and succession that determine the growth patterns of the city. There is rapid shift of population and formal social organization that existed tends to disintegrate as the original population retreats. Because the neighbourhood is in transition the residents no longer care as much about its appearance or reputation.

The high mobility means there is high turnover of children in the local schools, and therefore disruption of learning and discipline. The areas also tend to become battle ground between the invading and the retreating cultures, which tend to be manifested in individual and gang conflicts between youth and the homo culture.

Policy implications.

Shaw believed that since juvenile delinquency was generated by social disorganization, treatment of individual youth could not have much effect in reducing overall rates. He believed the answer was in the development of programmes, which seek to effect changes in the conditions of life in specific local communities and in whole sections of the city. This would be through organizations of neighborhood residents so that natural forces of social control would take effect. He launched the Chicago free project in 1932, which operated for 25 years until his death in 1957, but its effect delinquency in these areas was never fully evaluated.

In Boston, a similar project was evaluated by Miller (1962) over a three-year period and was found to achieve many desirable goals. The gangs established involvement in recreational activities provided opportunities for occupation and education and increased interagency cooperation to address community problem. However it had very little impact on delinquency rates.

Recent theory and Research on Neighborhood as causes of crime.

Despite the failure of the Chicago area project to prevent delinquency, criminologist continue to argue that neighborhoods themselves are important as causes of crime and delinquency and that they are appropriate for crime prevention programs (e.g. hence community policing programs)

This continued focus is the result of Shaw and Mc Kays discovery of residential succession (1942) where neighborhoods themselves associated with high crimes rates remained the same, independent of the people who lived there Stark (1987) identified structural characteristics of aspects of these neighborhoods to explain residential succession: density poverty, mixed uses (residential and industrial) dilapidation and transience (frequent in and out movement). Stark argues that these increase moral cynicism among the community residents, provide more opportunity or the motivation to commit crime and reduced surveillance. Therefore crime prone people are attracted to these neighborhoods as law-abiding people move out.

This results in high crime rates, which persist even when there is complete turnover in the people who live there. Sampson (1995) propose a variety of policy recommendation that are focused on changing places not people e.g. improve housing, services increased community power to promote community organizations, and that the small cumulative changes will result in a more stable community in the long.

The Chicago school can be described as a goldmine that has continued to enrich criminology. The basic point is that crime cannot be understood without also understanding the contexts in which it occurs. Crime is part of the symbiotic unity and so it can only be understood in the context of its relationship to the activities of the rest of the organism.

There is a symbiotic relationship between conventional and illegal activities in which a way that victims and offenders are linked in an ecology of crime. These criminologists must look at the social context to understand the parallel process by which victims come to experience the risk of crime and offenders come to be motivated to commit crime.

CONTROL THEORIES

Many theories of criminal behaviour assume that people naturally obey of the if left to their own devices, and argue that there are special forces – either biological, psychological, or social – that drive people to commit crime. Control theories take the opposite approach. They assume that all people naturally would commit crimes if left to their own devices. The key question, then, is why most people do not commit crimes. Control theories answer that question by focusing on special “controlling” forces that restrain the person from committing crimes. These forces break down in certain situations, resulting in crime and other “uncontrolled” behaviours. Thus individuals are said to commit crime because of the weakness of forces restraining them from doing so, not because of the strength of forces driving them to do so.

Control theories explain that each society has rules and tries to restrict its members to partake only in activities which are acceptable to the social order. Control theories explain how societies persuade people to live within these rules. It should be noted that conformity is always seen as fragile, as something that may be broken at any time if the reason for conformity is weakened, lost or temporarily broken. Criminality is therefore the breakdown of the socialization process. These theories are used to explain both juvenile and adult criminality.

EARLY CONTROL THEORIES: REISS TO NYE

Albert Reiss and Freudian conception

In 1951 Albert J. Reiss published an article in which he examined a number of factors related to the control perspective to see if they might be used to predict probation revocation among juvenile offenders. Reiss reviewed the official court records of 1,110 white male juvenile probationers between the ages of 11 and 17. He found that probation revocation was more likely when the juvenile was psychiatrically diagnosed as having weak ego or superego controls and when the psychiatrist recommended either intensive psychotherapy in the community or treatment in a closed institution. Reiss argued that such diagnoses and recommendations were based on an assessment of the juvenile’s “personal controls” – that is the ability to refrain from meeting needs in ways that conflicted with the norms and rules of the community. In addition, he found that probation revocation was more likely when juveniles did not regularly attend school, and when they were described as behaviour problems by school authorities. Reiss argued that these were a measure of the acceptance or submission of the juvenile to “social controls” – i.e., the control of socially approved institutions.

Jackson Toby and stakes in conformity theory

In 1957 Jackson Toby introduced the concept of “stakes in conformity” – i.e., how much a person has to lose when he or she breaks the law. He argued that all youths are tempted to break the law, but some youth risk much more than others when they give in to those temptations. Youths who do well in school not only risk being punished for breaking the law, but they also jeopardize their future careers. Thus they have high “stakes in conformity”. In contrast, youths who do poorly in school risk only being punished for their offense, since their future prospects are already dim. Thus they have less to lose when they break the law – i.e., lower “stakes in conformity.” Toby also argued that peer support for deviance can develop in communities that have a large number of youths with low stakes in conformity, so that the community develops even higher crime rates than would be expected by considering the stakes in conformity of the individual youths. Conversely, youths in suburbs who have low stakes in conformity normally obtain no support from their peers for delinquency. Thus these youths may be unhappy, but usually do not become delinquent.

Ivan Nye and the role of family theory

Ivan Nye published a study that focused on the family as the single most important source of social control for adolescents. He argued that most delinquent behaviour was the result of insufficient social control, and that most delinquent behaviour “caused” by positive factors was relatively rare. Social control was used as broad term that included direct controls exercised through conscience, indirect control related to affectional identification with parents and other non-criminal persons, and the availability of legitimate means to satisfy needs.

Nye found youths in the “most delinquent” group were more likely to be given either complete freedom or no freedom at all, to have larger sums of money available, to be rejecting of their parents and to disapprove of their parents’ appearance, to describe their parents as being seldom cheerful and often moody, nervous, irritable, difficult to please, dishonest, and who “took things out” on the youth when things went wrong. Youths whose mothers worked outside the home and who were rejected by their parents were slightly more likely to fall in the “most delinquent” group. In contrast, youths in the “least delinquent” group were significantly more likely to come from families that attended church regularly, did not move often, and were from rural areas. They were likely to be the eldest or only child, from a small family, to have a favourable attitude toward their parents’ disciplinary techniques and toward recreation with their parents, to agree with their parents on the importance of variety of values, to be satisfied with the allocation of money by their parents, and to get information and advice concerning dating and religion from their parents.

MATZ’S DELINQUENCY AND DRIFT: Conditions under which social control is loosened

While the early control theories presented above have been soundly criticized, they provided the basic concepts and framework for the modern control theories of David Matza and Travis Hirschi.

Matza proposed an alternate image for delinquents that emphasizes freedom and similarity rather than constraint and differentiation. That image was drift. Drift is said to occur in areas of the social structure in which control has been loosened, freeing the delinquent to respond to whatever conventional or criminal forces happen to come along. The positive causes of delinquency, then, “may be accidental or unpredictable from the point of view of any theoretical frame of reference, and deflection from the delinquent path may be similarly accidental or unpredictable.” Within the context of such an image a theory of delinquency would not attempt to describe its positive cause, but rather would describe “the conditions that make delinquent drift possible and probable,” that is, the conditions under which social control is loosened. Matza did not deny that there were “committed” and “compulsive” delinquents, as described by the traditional theories. However, he argued that the vast majority of delinquents were “drifters” who were neither, i.e they drift between conventional and criminal activities without begin committed to either.

Thus the delinquent does not reject conventional moral values, but “neutralizes” them in a wide variety of circumstances so that he is able to commit delinquent actions and still consider himself guiltless. This sense of irresponsibility is reinforced by that ideology of the juvenile court, which declares that juveniles are not responsible for their actions. The sense of irresponsibility is the immediate condition that makes delinquent drift possible, but the delinquent is prepared to accept the sense of irresponsibility by a pervasive sense of injustice.

So the sense of injustice is derived from a broad interpretation of conventional legal standards for justice. For example, by conventional legal standards of justice is necessary to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a given individual has committed a given criminal act. The delinquent uses excessively legalistic standards to argue that “they didn’t prove it.” Thus he may passionately argue that he was unjustly treated even though he admits that he committed the act.

Once the moral bind of the law has been loosened by the sense of irresponsibility and the sense of injustice, the juvenile is in a state of drift and is then free to choose among a variety of action, some delinquent some lawful. The juvenile feels that he exercises no control over the circumstances of his life and the destiny awaiting him. In such a mood he moves to make something happen, to experience himself as a cause of events. This mood of desperation provides the motivation to commit new acts of delinquency. Once those actions have been committed, he is motivated to continue committing them because he has learned the moral rationalizations necessary to consider himself guiltless, and because he has learnt the technical means to carry out the offenses.

HIRSCHI’S SOCIAL CONTROL THEORY

The theorist who is most closely identified with control theory is Travis Hirschi. In his 1969 book entitled Causes of Delinquency, Hirschi argued that it is not necessary to explain the motivation for delinquency, since “we are all animals and thus all naturally capable of committing criminal acts.” He then proposed a comprehensive control theory that individuals who were tightly bonded to social groups such as family, the school, and peers would be less likely to commit delinquent acts. The most important element of the social bond is attachment i.e., affection for and sensitivity to others.

A second element is commitment, the rational investment one has in conventional society and the risk one takes when engaging in deviant behaviour. The third is element of involvement in conventional activities. The final element of the social bond is belief- something that the individual chooses to accept such as values that are socially reinforced eg that stealing is bad.

Like Nye, Hirschi tested his theory with a self-report survey. The sample consisted of about 4,000 junior and senior high school youths from a county in the San Francisco Bay area. Hirschi reported that, in general, there was no relationship between reported delinquent acts and social class, except that children from the poorest families were slightly more likely to be delinquent. Hirschi then analyzed the effects of attachment to parents, schools, and peers and reported delinquent acts. He found that regardless of race or class, and regardless of the delinquency of their friends, boys who were more closely attached to their parents were less likely to report committing delinquent acts than those who were less closely attached.

Hirschi also found that youths who reported more delinquent acts were more likely to have poor verbal scores on the Differential Aptitude Test, to get poor grades in school, to care little about teachers’ opinions, to dislike school, and to reject school authority.

ASSESSING SOCIAL CONTROL THEORIES

Social control theories, especially Hirschi’s, have generated a large number of empirical studies, many of which have supported the theory. But many of these tests have focused on relatively trivial offenses committed by essentially non-delinquent youths. Both Hirschi’s study and Nye’s study, as reported above, are of this type. Hirschi admits that some theorists may hold that “delinquents are so obviously underrepresented among those completing the questionnaires that the results need not be taken seriously.”

Control theory may adequately explain delinquency in boys who spend only a few hours per year engaged in it. This problem is related to the control theory assumption that criminal and delinquent behaviours are” naturally motivated,” and that there are no outside pressures generating them. It is relatively easy and appealing when one thinks of the trivial offenses. But that image is less appealing when one considers the aggressive and violent nature of much serious gang delinquency and adult criminality.

Social control theories ultimately attribute such serious criminality to our innately aggressive and violent animal heritage. But the question of whether humans are inherently peaceful or inherently aggressive has been the subject of debate for over 2,000 years by philosophers, theologians, psychologists, sociologists, anthologists, and now criminologists. The debate is by no means resolved at the present time, and to that extent it is not possible to evaluate fully the control theory explanation of crime.

Despite this ongoing debate, there appears to be a growing agreement on a narrower issue that concerns the type of violence and aggression that is defined as serious crime. Even those who hold the view that aggression is an innate human characteristic now also argue that serious criminal behaviour represents a degeneration of the aggressive instincts caused by biological or social pathologies. If this view ultimately prevails, then social control theory could only be applied to less serious forms of delinquency and crime.

FROM SOCIAL CONTROL TO SELF-CONTROL GOTTFREDSON AND HIRSCH’S GENERAL THEORY OF CRIME

In 1990, Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi published a General Theory of Crime, claiming that all types of crime can be explained by “low self-control” coupled with availability of opportunities. “Self control is conceived as internal to the individual, whereas “social control,” on which Hirschi focused in his 1969 theory, is largely external to the individual.

Gottfreson and Hirschi first make some assertions about “the characteristics of ordinary crimes”: They are said to be acts that involve simple and immediate gratification of desires but few long-term benefits, are exciting and risky but require little skill planning, and generally produce few benefits for the offender while causing pain and suffering for the victim. Second, they describe the characteristics of people who would commit these kinds of actions: they “will tend to be impulsive, insensitive, physical (as opposed to mental), risk-taking, short-sighted, and nonverbal.”

Third Gottfredson and Hirschi argue “since these traits can be identified prior to the age of responsibility for crime, since there is considerable tendency for these traits to come together in the people, and since the traits tend to persist through life, it seems reasonable to consider them as compromising a stable construct useful in the explanation of crime.” They call this stable construct “low self-control.” Fourth, Gottfreson and Hirschi argue that ineffective child rearing, which results in high self-control in the child, occurs when the child’s behaviour is monitored and deviant behaviour is immediately recognized and punished. Essentially, external controls on the child’s behaviour are monitored and any deviant behaviour is immediately punished. Essentially, external controls on the child’s behaviour eventually are internalized by the child in a process described as “socialization.” An additional source of socialization through their families is the school.

Low self-control explains many of the known relationships between delinquency and other factors. For example, they the relationship between delinquent peers and delinquency is explained by the fact low self-control juveniles are likely to seek out others with low-self control as a peer group.

Gottfredson and Hirschi argue that self-control is relatively constant in the individual after the age of about 8, but they recognize that there may be a great deal of change in the rates at which individuals commit crime. These variations cannot, within their theory, be explained by throughout the person’s life. So Gottfredson and Hirschi argue that variations in crime are explained by variation in opportunities for different types of criminal and non-criminal behaviours.

One problem area for this theory is found in organized criminal behaviour, since it could be argued that organized criminals do not lack self-control. Gottfredson and Hirchi therefore devote a chapter to de bunking this argument. In their view, “organized crime” is not really organized, and any apparent organization is short-lived and consists of unstable temporary alliances. Furthermore, they claim that the reason for the failure of many cooperative attempts at criminality is that the individuals involved lack self-control. They discount the importance of organized drug dealing by arguing that for every successful organized effort, there are hundreds of failed efforts.

The scope of Hirschi and Gottfredson’s theory has also been challenged, particularly their statement that the theory is meant to explain all crimes. Several scholars have questioned whether low self-control can explain white-collar crime, for example, although Gottfredson and Hirschi argue it can. Because many wonder whether low self-control by itself can explain such wide variations in different types of crimes, criminologists naturally are interested in how differential opportunity structures may interact with low self-control to produce variations in crime rates.

There have been several tests of Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory to date. All have examined linkages between low self-control and criminal acts or analogous behaviours. All these studies have found at least some support for Gottfredson and Hirschi’s theory, and some have found fairly strong support. However, there have been few attempts to control for alternate explanations from other theories.

None of these tests has examined the link between child-rearing and low self-control as a stable construction the individual. Perhaps the theory’s most controversial component is its argument that self-control is essentially stable by the age of 8 or so, having been determined by child-rearing practices. Until this argument is tested, a general assessment of the theory cannot be made.

The primary advantage of Gottfredson and Hirschi’s theory is also its chief point of vulnerability: its simplicity. The idea that a single simple concept can explain the entire range of criminal behaviour is quite appealing, and many criminologists are enthused about this possibility. But other criminologists argue that criminal behaviour is far too complex to be explained by a single theory particularly a simple one.

CONCLUSIONS

Social control theories appeal to criminologists for several reasons. First, they provide criminologists with very testable theories. Many other criminological theories, in contrast, are much more difficult to test in that their concepts and variables are very difficult to operationalize. Second, social control theories have been linked from the outset with a new research technique, the self-report that support the basic contentions of the theories. The combination of a testable theory with a research technique that produces supportive results is very attractive, to say the least.

A number of criminologists have concluded that social control theories in general and Hirschi’s social control theory in particular, is supported by empirical research. That conclusion, however, does not seem warranted either by general research on human behaviour or by specifically criminological research focusing on the explanation of criminal and delinquent behaviour.

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