Social Control Theory and Self Control Theory

Social and self control theories Author’s Name Institutional Affiliation Abstract The social control theories and self control theories are major elements in the study of criminal minds also known as criminology. Most theorists agree that social control theory is attributed to both criminal and delinquent acts. Weakness, breakdown or absence of social bonds is what Jensen (2003) attributes to law breaking in the social theory. Self control theories focus more on the individual than factors that lead to criminal acts; it also investigates criminal minds both at individual and group levels. These theories scrutinize aspects of self control and divide them into belief, attachment and commitment in the society. Hirchi (1969) combined all elements of social psychology of attachment, belief and commitment with social involvement in the explanation to describe human behaviour. The topic of the paper is Social control theory and self control theory. The thesis statement is comparison and contrasting of the social and self control theories as defined by several control theorists. The paper will be presented with the introduction, the body and conclusion. It will involve the comparison and contrast of the social and self control theories by different theorists and contrasting view points on delinquent behaviour. The paper will also identify the major theorists who have researched and supported each theoretical perspective and include at least one statistic for each theory that compares and contrasts American delinquent behaviours. In general it will try to explain according to each theory as advanced by the different theorists what motivates criminals and keep them committing crimes. In the conclusion, it will state which theory explains in the best way why people act in a delinquent and deviant manner. Introduction FutoncountyGA.GOV gives the description of Delinquents as people who commit juvenile actions or conduct themselves in a manner which violates the criminal law and in some cases, be applied to status offenders. This means that delinquency is the action to commit these acts. Social and self control theories best explains the events leading to such behavior. Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (1990) articulation theory is a general theory of crime and other related behaviors go ahead to show how most criminal behavior would be and in the end acknowledging age as a factor in criminology and any consequent offences. They explained that age is inversely proportional to crime in relation to the statistics collected. This discards the age old belief that crime is only based upon ones free will and choice; instead it views crimes as natural consequences of unrestrained human tendencies in their quest to seek pleasure. The above theory is a social control theory since it concentrates more on the nature of the crime rather than the individual. Body An in-depth look into the theory gives us facts that low self control is a factor in the establishment of the theory whereby Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) tries to explain the origin of all criminal or otherwise analogous behavior. Arneklev et...