Paper Topic 6 – Control TheoriesInstructions IN YOUR OWN WORDS.docx

Paper Topic 6 – Control Theories
Instructions: IN YOUR OWN WORDS, please write a response
to the following question. Make sure to answer all parts of the
question. Your response should be based on the material from
the attached readings. Again, your response should be 2-3
pages in length, double spaced (times new roman, 12pt font, 1
inch margins). Paper is due 2/21/2016 at 10:00pm EST
_____________________________________________________
_________________________
CONTROL THEORIES
Travis Hirschi has had an important influence on criminology,
first authoring Causes of Delinquency in 1969 and then A
General Theory of Crime in 1990 with Michael Gottfredson.
This question asks you to trace Hirschi’s work, showing how he
demarcated the distinctive nature of control theories and then
offered two major versions of control perspectives.
In particular, your answer should address the following issues:
1. According to Hirschi, define what makes a perspective a
control theory. For example, what is its distinctive premise
about human nature? What question does the theory ask? How
does control theory differ fundamentally from the assumptions
underlying its two major competitors: differential
association/social learning theory and strain theory.
2. Discuss Hirschi’s social bond theory. What is the theory?
Discuss each social bond, including how each bond acts as a
control.
3. Then, discuss Gottfredson and Hirschi’s self-control theory.
How is it a control theory? What is low self-control and what is
the source of low self control? Also, how did Hirschi’s self-
control theory represents a fundamental critique of his earlier

social bond theory?
Published by Articulate® Presenter '13 www.articulate.com
Presentation Details:
Slides: 5
Duration: 00:12:00
Filename: C:UsersPadenSLDesktopSelf Control.ppt
Description:
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
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
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
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”).
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
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
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

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.
Presentation Details:
Slides: 7
Duration: 00:15:55

Filename: C:UsersPadenSLDesktopSocial Bonds.ppt
Description:
Slide 1
Control Theories
Duration: 00:00:12
Advance mode: Auto
Notes:
CONTROL THEORIES
Hello. In this presentation, I’m going to give an
overview of several different control theories of
crime that you are reading about in this
module.
Slide 2
Crime Theories: The Big 3
Duration: 00:01:43
Advance mode: Auto
Notes:

CRIME THEORIES: THE BIG 3
As noted in some of the earlier modules, while
there are many theories of crime, there are 3
major explanations that have dominated
criminology and which offer wholly different
takes on why crime occurs.
Strain theories argue that crime occurs
because of negative experiences and push
factors that create a greater pressure toward
crime.
In contrast, Learning theories are considered
“pull” theories of crime and argue that people
are drawn into crime and led into it through the
messages and associations they have.
In this module, we are going to discuss the 3
rd
family of theories – CONTROL theories.
Unlike the learning and strain theories, which
ask whether people are pulled or pushed into
crime, Control theories focus on a different
question. They are trying to explain why
people DON’T commit crime. This seems like

a subtle difference, but it is key and makes the
control theories fundamentally different than
the other perspectives. The control theories
argue that you don’t have to explain why
people offend… it is their natural tendency.
Instead we should be trying to explain what it
is that keeps most people honest and keeps
them from acting on these impulses, and they
argue that it is due to different types of external
or internal social controls.
Slide 3
Social Bond Theory
Duration: 00:01:58
Advance mode: Auto
Notes:
SOCIAL BOND THEORY
There are a variety of different control
perspectives, but one of the first control
theories to gain widespread attention in
criminology was Social Bond theory,
developed by Travis Hirschi in his 1960 book
“Causes of Delinquency.” Although there were
others before his (like Walter Reckless’s
Containment theory), Hirschi’s theory was very
well defined and clear in its arguments. Also,
Hirschi helped launch his theory by providing
thorough empirical tests of his arguments to
show that held up under testing with real data.
Like all control theories, Hirschi is interested in

explaining why people DON’T offend and why
we don’t commit crime. He says the other
major theories of the time (learning and
anomie theories) were flawed because they
were trying to explain why people were
motivated to offend. He said that motivation
was natural and there was no need to explain
offender motivation, and thus, he argued that
these other theories were missing the point.
He said that people were just like chickens
who would take each other’s feed… crime and
offending was our natural impulse. But many
of us didn’t act on that impulse, which was
what Hirschi wanted to explain. Why didn’t we
if it was our natural tendency.
He argued that it was because we had
SOCIAL BONDS to society and external
controls that kept us honest and kept us from
offending. He said it was only when these
bonds and controls were broken that we were
likely to commit crime, as the quote says here.
Slide 4
4 Social Bonds
Duration: 00:02:46
Advance mode: Auto

Notes:
4 SOCIAL BONDS
So what were these social bonds or social
controls. Hirschi said that there were 4
specific types of external social bonds that
provided social control over our behavior to
prevent crime.
First, he described ATTACHMENT, which has
received the most attention among the 4
bonds, the most testing and support, and is
often considered the most important of the
bonds.
Attachment is essentially a sensitivity to the
opinions of others. Or caring about what
others think of you. Usually this is focused on
parents, but also teachers, friends, mentors,
and peers. The ideas is that if you truly care
about others opinions of you and your
relationships with others, then you are less
likely to act on criminal temptation and
impulses for fear of disappointing these people
and putting these relationships at risk (even if
you don’t think they would actually find out
about the crime).

Tests of this theory have found strong support
for this idea and have found that strong
attachment to family and school are among
one of the stronger predictors of conformity.
The second bond he described was
COMMITMENT, which are essentially
investments or commitments in conventional
society.
These are also commonly referred to as
“stakes in conformity.” These are all the things
you’ve invested energy, time, money, and
resources in and are afraid of losing if you
committed crime. It’s everything you’ve
poured into your conventional life, that you
could lose with the wrong decisions, such as
your job, home, reputation, possessions, kids,
schooling, marriage, a spot on a sports
team/club, or an ROTC scholarships, just to
name a few. And they could be expected
commitments, like your plans to go into law
enforcement in the future, which you don’t
want to jeopardize with crime.
In many cases, research has shown that these
types of commitments can have strong effects
on people’s willingness to engage in crime.

We have seen that many times, the things that
lead people to desist from crime (or the
TURNING POINTS in criminal behavior) often
occur when people develop these
commitments and get good jobs, families,
homes, and other investments make crime
seem like it’s not worth it anymore.
Slide 5
4 Social Bonds
Duration: 00:02:18
Advance mode: Auto
Notes:
4 SOCIAL BONDS
The third bond Hirschi described was
INVOLVEMENT, which is straightforward. He
basically argues that when people are busy
and tied to conventional activities, they don’t
have time to get in trouble. The phrase, “Idle
hands are the devil’s workshop summarizes
this idea.” Hirschi argues that if you are
working full time, involved in community or
church groups, volunteering on the weekends,
raising kids, and taking classes, chances are
you don’t have time or energy to get into much
trouble. In contrast, if you are out of work,
single, and aren’t connected to many of these
conventional activities, you are much more
free to act on those criminal impulses and
opportunities he describes.

Last, he says that BELIEF is the fourth bond.
He says that we are socialized into a common
set of beliefs and one overarching
conventional system. By saying this, he was
criticizing the subcultural theories that said
there are different belief systems toward crime.
He simply said that some of us are more
strongly tied to this belief system about the
rightness of law and unacceptability of crime
than others. For some of us, crime is
unacceptable in all forms because we have
been strongly socialized into these mainstream
values. But for others, we may have quite as
rigid beliefs about this and may feel that crime
isn’t that big a deal in some scenarios, for
example, using pot from time to time or taking
something from your employer as long as no
one gets hurt.
As you can see, these 4 bonds are connected
too. If you are committed to a job, sports
team, or family, chances are you will be highly
involved and build strong attachments too.
Slide 6
Critiques of Social Bond Theory
Duration: 00:02:52
Advance mode: Auto

Notes:
CRITIQUES OF SOCIAL BOND THEORY
In general, social bond theory has received
fairly strong support in research. But there
have been a number of critiques of this
explanation of crime that are worth noting. For
example, some argue that they theory could
have the causal order backwards to some
degree. Maybe it isn’t that having weak bonds
causes crime. It’s very likely that if you commit
crime, have done time, and have a criminal
record, you will have a harder time forming
strong attachments and commitments in the
conventional world.
Others have critiqued the theory by asking,
what if you are bonded to crime? What if you
are strongly attached to someone who is a
drug dealer? Or what if you are highly
invested and committed in criminal activity?
They argue that this could actually lead to
more crime. Hirschi denied these influences,
but others (especially fans of learning theories)
suggest this is very possible.

Some dislike the theory because it ignores
motivation and assumes that we are “like
chickens taking each other’s feed” and are
naturally motivated to commit crime. It
assumes that motivation is constant. But other
theories and evidence suggests that our
motivation to commit crime can increase or
decrease in different contexts.
In addition, the theory doesn’t tell us why very
bonded individuals would commit crime. Why
would someone (like a white collar offender for
instance) who has many attachments in the
conventional world, has many investments and
commitments they could lose, and is highly
involved in conventional activities commit
crime. Likewise, why is it that some people
who have very weak sets of bonds are never
interested in crime (if motivation is inherent,
this doesn’t make as much sense).
Slide 7
Sykes and Matza Techniques of
Neutralization
Duration: 00:04:06
Advance mode: Auto

Notes:
SYKES AND MATZA TECHNIQUES OF
NEUTRALIZATION
Well, Sykes and Matza have offered some
ideas to help answer this last question… “why
do bonded individuals commit crime” and “why
do we break the laws that we agree with.” In
their research talking with offenders, they
found some interesting patterns. They found
that even among serious criminals, many of
them held pretty conventional beliefs and had
conventional ideas about the law. They often
had tremendous respect for law abiding people
in their lives (like their mothers) and saw some
people (like priests and religious leaders) as
off limits for crime, and when asked, often said
that they knew what they were doing was
wrong and that they didn’t think it was a good
thing. Again, this went against the subcultural
arguments, showing that many offenders didn’t
agree with or value crime and saw it as “bad”
even while they did it.
So why did people who believed in the
rightness of laws and had attachment and
commitment to conventional people and beliefs
go ahead and commit crime? Sykes and
Matza said it was because they were able to
develop “TECHNIQUES OF
NEUTRALIZATION” to free themselves from
these bonds and controls and loosen their
power. These are like internal dialogues that
people used before commission of crime to
find ways to justify crime and harms they were
considering and change their mindset.

Essentially, they NEUTRALIZED the guilt,
shame, and stigma they might experience with
these justifications. For example, when
considering whether to skim money from an
employer, people might tell themselves “I
deserve it, no one will miss it, I’ll pay it back, or
it’s for my family and something more
important than just dollars and cents.” They
develop and rely on these messages to
weaken the hold of the other controls and
bonds in their life to the conventional order, so
they can still feel they are a good trustworthy
person who believes in the conventional,
mainstream value system, even while they
commit crime.
Notably, Sykes and Matza’s techniques of
neutralization has often been considered as
much a learning theory as it is a control theory,
because these neutralizations and internal
dialogues are often learned messages that
people have been exposed to and use to
change their mindset and weaken controls. So
this theory is like a hybrid of learning and
control theory concepts.
In the selection you are reading by Sykes and
Matza, they outline the specific types of
neutralizations they suggest that people often

use… such as Denial of responsibility (“I had
no choice”), Denial of injury (“they’re insured
and no one will even notice”), Denial of victim
(“they deserved it/had it coming”), Condemning
the condemners (“Other people have done a
lot worse than this”), and Appealing to higher
loyalty (“I need this for my family”), just to give
you a few examples.
In the next presentation, I’ll cover a couple final
control theories known as Self Control theory
and Sampson and Laub’s Age-Graded theory
of Control.

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