Understanding Early Control Theories of Crime
Early Control Theories of Crime
Basics of Control Theories
- Rose to prominence in the 1960s
- Self-report studies revealed that crime wasn’t limited to the lower class.
- Everybody would commit crime if there weren’t constraints on their behavior.
- People are innately selfish.
- Criminal acts are inherently exciting.
- These theories are concerned with why individuals don’t commit crime.
- They ask what it is about society and human interactions that cause people not to act on their impulses.
- Do not assume that people are biologically predisposed to crime.
- Argue that most of us had antisocial dispositions whilst infants but that most of us desisted after the age of 2 and is even more evident after 5.
Why are the ages of 2 and 5 important?
- Argue that it is only after the age of 2 that we begin to see ourselves as people.
- This is the age where our basic social emotions start to show – shame, guilt, empathy.
- Control theorists argue that without correct socialization, people will act on their primordial tendency towards crime and delinquency. This is why there is a focus on family and peer group.
Emile Durkheim (1858-1916)
- French sociologist
- Consistent with views of Hobbes
- Influenced by the French and American Revolutions and the Industrial Revolution.
Durkheim argued that in primitive mechanical societies people performed the same functions/tasks.
Similarities in work and social roles lead to a strong uniformity of values = “collective conscience.”
- He argued that in mechanical societies people begin to perform different tasks, breaking down the “collective conscience.”
- The result of modernity is huge cultural differences and contrasts in normative values and attitudes between groups.
- A weak collective conscience creates a climate for anti-social behavior.
- Durkheim argued that crime is not only normal but necessary in all societies.
Why is Crime Important?
- Defines moral boundaries of societies.
- Identification of rule breakers creates a bond amongst members of society.
How are the Salem witch trials considered an example of Durkheim’s theory?
- “Collective consensus” as dangerous?
- Argued that could lead to too much control over individuals and a stagnation of collective thought.
- Progress made by deviating from established moral boundaries.
- Argued that the normative structure in some societies is so strong that it hinders progress and that crime is the price society pays for progress.
- If this is true, is it applicable to all crimes?
- Believed that humans have no internal mechanisms to let them know when they are fulfilled.
- “Awakened reflection” = greed
- Breakdown of collective conscious because there is no longer a collective nature in modern society.
- Rapid changes, whether good or bad, would have negative effects on a society.
- Rapid changes will see increases in criminal activity as there is a lack of stability in regulating human expectations and desires.