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Slide 1 Control Theories 2 Duration: 00:00:21 Advance mode: Auto

Notes: CONTROL THEORIES 2

In the last presentation I described Hirschi’s Social Bond theory and the Techniques of Neutralization. In this presentation, I will briefly describe Self Control theory (another control theory that Hirschi was involved in) as well as a newer theory, the Age-Graded Theory of Control.

Slide 2 A General Theory of Crime Self- Control Theory Duration: 00:03:06 Advance mode: Auto

Notes: A GENERAL THEORY OF CRIME – SELF CONTROL THEORY

In the last presentation, I described Hirschi’s Social Bond theory, which has been very influential in criminology and has received substantial attention and support as an explanations of why people DON’T commit crime. It’s rare for a criminologist to develop one big idea that is as powerful and widely used as Hirschi’s Social Bond theory. But he didn’t stop there. In 1990, he teamed up with Michael Gottfredson and developed another control theory called the Self Control theory of crime. But what was even more unusual was that he reversed many of his original ideas from Social Bond theory in this new perspective. Like Social Bond theory, Self Control theory

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tries to explain why people don’t commit crime. Also, this theory has been called the GENERAL THEORY OF CRIME because Gottfredson and Hirschi argued that it could explain all types of crime and was the underlying reason for all criminal behavior. Also, like Social Bond theory, Self Control theory assumes that we are all naturally motivated to commit crime and would act on these natural impulses if we didn’t have some types of controls at work to keep us honest. But this is where most of the similarities between the theories end. While Social Bond theory said that external ties, controls, and relationships kept us bonded to conventional society and prevented crime, Self Control theory largely dismisses these external controls and says that crime and conformity depend mostly on INTERNAL controls or SELF CONTROLS over behavior. They said that people with low self control were much more likely to be involved in crime and act on the temptations of the moment. And all those external bonds and controls? They said that they were usually just signs of people who had low or high self control. So if it looked like attachment reduced crime, that was just an illusion because it was really the case that people with high self control tended to have more attachments, commitments, and involvement, and also didn’t get into trouble much. So what does low self control look like? They said that people with low self control were impulsive, preferred simple tasks over complex

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ones, were risk takers and thrill seekers, preferred physicality over mental stimulation, were self centered and had trouble putting others first, and had short tempers.

Slide 3 Self-Control Duration: 00:01:59 Advance mode: Auto

Notes: SELF CONTROL

How do people develop this internal self control? Well, they said it was instilled early on in childhood by your parents. If parents monitor their children and punish or correct their misbehavior, it teaches children self control and they begin to internalize this. But it’s set pretty early in life. They claimed that by age 8, a child’s level of self control is pretty well set and does not change throughout the life course. So all those external bonds they might experience (according to Hirschi’s first theory), they said that they wouldn’t really influence or change a person’s underlying level of self control (which has been a source of controversy and debate for the theory). They said that once low self control was established in a person, it tended to stick with them throughout their life and lead to a high CRIMINAL PROPENSITY. In other words, the person had an underlying risk factor and vulnerability to crime and the temptations of the moment. They couldn’t defer gratification and tended to act on impulse and look for immediate gains when an opportunity presented itself, without thought for future consequences. They had little internal control

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over their behavior and it was like they couldn’t help themselves in the temptation of the moment. Plus, Gottfredson and Hirschi said this propensity wasn’t just limited to crime. It could explain analogous acts and other risky behavior, like smoking, excessive drinking, risky sexual activity, and even people who were accident prone. They said that this concept of low self control could explain much of why some people ended up on the wrong end of the law and seemed to attract trouble and problems throughout their lives… it was all about low self control established in childhood.

Slide 4 Critiques of Self-Control Theory Duration: 00:03:13 Advance mode: Auto

Notes: CRITIQUES OF SELF CONTROL THEORY

Although it is a very new perspective, Self Control theory has received substantial attention and a fair amount of support when tested. But there are some pretty big criticisms of the theory too. Many criminologists argue that it is very hard to pinpoint exactly what low self control is. It is an internal process and propensity and it’s mostly described based on a series of attributes like “impulsiveness.” But to a degree it feels like one of those things that “we know it when we see it” and sometimes it feels like we can’t really identify it until after people commit crime (then we simply say it must have been due to their “low self control”).

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It has received a fair amount of support when tested, but if the theory is supposed to be a “general theory of crime” that can explain all criminal offending, then moderate or decent support doesn’t cut it. The authors made very strong claims about this theory (like the idea that it can explain all crime) and they set a very high bar for the theory, which has been part of the theory’s problem. Also, they dismiss many other major theories that criminologists suggest have a place in explaining crime too, including Hirschi’s earlier theory of Social Bonds. They say that social bonds (which seemed to provide a pretty strong explanation of crime) don’t really explain crime and do not influence or change individuals… it’s all about the underlying propensity set by age 8. This has been one of the biggest criticisms of the theory. It’s not that the idea of self control is wrong, it’s just that the authors make such bold claims and are so dismissive of other theories, that it has been met with much resistance by some criminologists. In other words, criminologists agree with many of the basic ideas of the theory, but feel that this isn’t the only answer to crime. Self control might be able to be changed later in life and there might be room for other theories too. Last, many have critiqued the theory for paying little attention to opportunity and for explaining some crimes better than others. The authors explain that low self control doesn’t always lead to crime. It depends on whether you have

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opportunity and “temptations of the moment,” but they give opportunity little focused attention in their work. Also, researchers argue that some crimes don’t seem to fit the impulsive, immediate gratification model described in this theory. Rather some crimes, (like running a fencing operation, running a numbers game or sports book, and long cons or organized crime) involve quite a bit of planning, deferred gratification, and forethought, which doesn’t line up with the model of offenders having low self control.

Slide 5 Sampson and Laub – Age Graded Theory of Control Duration: 00:03:21 Advance mode: Auto

Notes: SAMPSON AND LAUB – AGE GRADED THEORY OF CONTROL

The last control theory I’ll discuss is a very new theory in this area developed by Robert Samson and John Laub called the Age Graded theory of Control, which is like a hybrid of Social Bond and Self Control theories. Sampson and Laub were actually students of Travis Hirschi, and while they liked his ideas and built off of them, they saw each of his theories as incomplete on its own. They felt that (unlike Hirschi’s claims) the theories didn’t have to necessarily oppose one another, and they found a way to combine them. In their work, they went back to the Gleucks’ data on delinquent boys (which you may remember from the biosocial section in our earlier Modules) and they decided to track down the boys decades after the Gluecks

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examined them. By doing this and looking at the boys’ offending over their LIFECOURSE, they were able to get a different picture of offending than Hirschi and Gottfredson had with the earlier theories. And notably, they found evidence of both continuity or stability in offending (like self control theory argued), but they also found substantial changes in offending over these boys life courses. It was almost like a paradox. On the one hand, they found tremendous stability in offending. Childhood behavior and delinquency was one of the strongest predictors of later offending. And antisocial behavior as an adult virtually required childhood problems. In other words, there was a lot of evidence for stability in offending and it looked like the adult offenders really did have the underlying criminal propensity Gottfredson and Hirschi described in their Self Control theory. But, Sampson and Laub also found that among the 500 delinquent boys in the Gluecks’ data, most of them had stopped offending years ago. In other words, there was room for change, and most of the boys did change and quit their delinquent actions. It couldn’t all be about stability and propensity then, because (just as the age crime curve shows us), most kids that get in trouble quit by the time they hit young adulthood and age out of crime pretty quickly… and often when they hit major turning points in life. That is, when they develop the social bonds, attachments, and commitments that make criminal offending just not seem

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worth it anymore, like getting married and getting a good job. In effect, Sampson and Laub were able to wed the two theories together by considering the life course of offenders and noting that, while there is a lot of stability in offending over the course of people’s lives, most people do change their offending with age too. It was essentially the difference in looking backwards vs. looking forwards. If you looked back on an offender’s life, you almost always saw earlier offending and signs of stability in their behavioral history. But if you looked forward and examined youthful offending, you saw substantial change throughout the lifecourse as most young offenders matured and left their delinquent ways behind.