research paper on social control theory

Social Control Theory

• Reference work entry
• First Online: 01 January 2014
• pp 2768–2769
• Cite this reference work entry

• Roger J. R. Levesque 2  

1275 Accesses

One of the major theoretical and empirical developments in developmental criminology (among other related fields) has been the formulation and testing of a life-course theory of informal social control. This approach to understanding why individuals commit crime or other types of problem behavior emphasizes informal vis-à-vis formal social control. The latter form of control focuses on state sanctions as incarceration, policing, surveillance, and other ways a government can enforce conformity. Informal social control theories complement the formal, state control as it emphasizes social bonds between an individual and society and, in brief, suggests that individuals engage in problem behaviors when those bonds are either weak or broken (Hirschi 1969 ; Sampson and Laub 1993 ).

The most widely examined conceptualization of informal social control theories is Hirschi’s ( 1969 ). Hirschi’s social control theory states that strong social bonds to conventional social institutions inhibit...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Available as EPUB and PDF

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Alarid, L. F., Burton, V. S., Jr., & Cullen, F. T. (2000). Gender and crime among felony offenders: Assessing the generality of social control and differential association theories. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 37 , 171–199.

Google Scholar  

Booth, J., Farrell, A., & Varano, S. (2008). Social control, serious delinquency, and risky behavior: A gendered analysis. Crime & Delinquency, 54 , 423–456.

Bushway, S. D., Piquero, A. R., Broidy, L. M., Cauffman, E., & Mazerolle, P. (2001). An empirical framework for studying desistance as a process. Criminology, 39 , 491–515.

Dornbusch, S. M., Erickson, K. G., Laird, J., & Wong, C. A. (2001). The relation of family and school attachment to adolescent deviance in diverse groups and communities. Journal of Adolescent Research, 16 , 396–422.

Erickson, K. G., Crosnoe, R., & Dornbusch, S. M. (2000). A social process model of adolescent deviance: Combining social control and differential association perspectives. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 29 , 395–425.

Haynie, D. L. (2001). Delinquent peers revisited: Does network structure matter? American Journal of Sociology, 106 , 1013–1057.

Heimer, K., & DeCoster, S. (1999). The gendering of violent delinquency. Criminology, 37 , 277–317.

Hirschi, T. (1969). Causes of delinquency . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Huebner, A. J., & Betts, S. C. (2002). Exploring the utility of social control theory for youth development. Youth and Society, 34 , 123–145.

Laub, J. H., & Sampson, R. J. (2003). Shared beginnings, divergent lives: Delinquent boys to age 70 . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Laundra, K. H., Kiger, G., & Bahr, S. J. (2002). A social development model of serious delinquency: Examining gender differences. Journal of Primary Prevention, 22 , 389–407.

Mason, W. A., & Windle, M. (2002). Gender, self-control, and informal social control in adolescence: A test of three models of the continuity of delinquent behavior. Youth and Society, 33 , 479–514.

Miller, M. H., Esbensen, F., & Freng, A. (1999). Parental attachment, parental supervision and adolescent deviance in intact and non-intact families. Journal of Crime and Justice, 22 , 1–29.

Osgood, D. W., Wilson, J. K., O’Malley, P. M., Bachman, J. G., & Johnston, L. D. (1996). Routine activities and individual deviant behavior. American Sociological Review, 61 , 635–655.

Sampson, R. J., & Laub, J. H. (1993). Crime in the making: Pathways and turning points through Life . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Indiana University, 302 Sycamore Hall, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA

Roger J. R. Levesque

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Roger J. R. Levesque .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations, rights and permissions.

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

About this entry

Cite this entry.

Levesque, R.J.R. (2011). Social Control Theory. In: Levesque, R.J.R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Adolescence. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1695-2_410

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1695-2_410

Published : 12 August 2014

Publisher Name : Springer, New York, NY

Print ISBN : 978-1-4419-1694-5

Online ISBN : 978-1-4419-1695-2

eBook Packages : Behavioral Science

Share this entry

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

• Subject List
• Take a Tour
• For Authors
• Subscriber Services
• Publications
• African American Studies
• African Studies
• American Literature
• Anthropology
• Architecture Planning and Preservation
• Art History
• Atlantic History
• Biblical Studies
• British and Irish Literature
• Childhood Studies
• Chinese Studies
• Cinema and Media Studies
• Communication

Criminology

• Environmental Science
• Evolutionary Biology
• International Law
• International Relations
• Islamic Studies
• Jewish Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Latino Studies
• Linguistics
• Literary and Critical Theory
• Medieval Studies
• Military History
• Political Science
• Public Health
• Renaissance and Reformation
• Social Work
• Urban Studies
• Victorian Literature
• Browse All Subjects

How to Subscribe

• Free Trials

In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Social Threat and Social Control

Introduction, general overviews.

• Foundational Texts
• Police Size
• Other Policing Behaviors
• Sentencing and Incarceration
• Death Penalty
• Lynchings and Hate Crimes
• Justice System Resources and Expenditures
• Fear of Minority Crime
• Other Social Control Mechanisms
• Nature of Social Threat
• Elaborations and Extensions
• International Research

Related Articles Expand or collapse the "related articles" section about

About related articles close popup.

Lorem Ipsum Sit Dolor Amet

Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Aliquam ligula odio, euismod ut aliquam et, vestibulum nec risus. Nulla viverra, arcu et iaculis consequat, justo diam ornare tellus, semper ultrices tellus nunc eu tellus.

• Criminology and Political Science
• Fear of Crime and Perceived Risk
• Immigration, Crime, and Justice
• Legal Perspectives on the US War on Terrorism
• Race and the Police
• Race, Ethnicity, Crime, and Justice
• Racial Profiling

Other Subject Areas

Forthcoming articles expand or collapse the "forthcoming articles" section.

• Education Programs in Prison
• Juvenile Justice Professionals' Perceptions of Youth
• Juvenile Waiver
• Find more forthcoming articles...
• Export Citations
• Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Social Threat and Social Control by David Eitle , Zachary Morgan-Edwards LAST REVIEWED: 14 April 2011 LAST MODIFIED: 14 April 2011 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195396607-0122

For much of the latter part of the 20th century, social scientists have scrutinized the social control of crime. One focus has been on the role of extralegal factors such as race and social class in explaining the nature and distribution of various social-control efforts. A prominent explanation that incorporates issues of racial and economic stratification into an explanation of social control is social threat. Inspired by the conflict perspective and its emphasis on the use of state apparatuses, including the law and criminal justice institutions, to control subordinate groups who threaten the interests of dominant groups, social threat predicts that as racial and/or economically disadvantaged groups challenge the dominant group’s interests, both formal (e.g., arrests, imprisonments, executions, use of force) and informal (lynchings, hate crimes, interracial killings) social control mechanisms will be utilized to maintain the status quo. While the earliest studies examined the association between the relative size of the subordinate group and the use of various social-control mechanisms, recent research has been driven by more deliberate inquiry into the precise nature of the threat posed by the subordinate group. The nature of the threat, in terms of both its conceptualization and measurement, has varied considerably, including foci on such threats as economic competition, political mobilization, and even interracial crime. But while the nature of the threat and the particular subordinate group examined have inspired a number of different labels for this thesis, including racial threat, power threat, minority group threat, and realist conflict theory, these inquiries are united in examining an association between threat and social- control efforts.

For undergraduates and graduate students just starting out and exploring issues of social threat (especially racial threat theory), the four sources listed below provide good starting points. Higgins 2010 provides both an introduction to the theory and a published article as an example of work in the area, while Gabbidon 2010 is more of a classic, textbook approach to conflict theory and racial threat (chapter 6). Weitzer and Tuch’s 2006 important work on race and policing provides a simple but useful overview of social threat in their introductory chapter. Bridges and Myers 1994 provides a collection of articles addressing the nexus between inequality and social control, including insightful contributions from Darrell Hawkins on ethnicity and social control and Kathleen Daly on gender and social control.

Bridges, George S., and Martha A. Myers. 1994. Inequality, crime, and social control . Crime and Society. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Papers presented at a meeting held at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education, Athens, Georgia, April 1992. A sociological examination of the linkages between inequality, crime, and social control, this anthology expands extant scholarship regarding the theoretical foundations of social control, the subjugated groups experiencing social control, the relationships between various social control mechanisms, and the link between individual attitudes and the use of social control mechanisms.

Gabbidon, Shaun, L. 2010. Criminological perspectives on race and crime . New York: Routledge.

Like Higgins 2010 , this text addresses ways in which criminology explains the association between race and crime. More of a standard textbook than Higgins 2010 , Gabbidon 2010 provides a solid overview of conflict and racial threat theory (indeed, devotes an entire chapter to the topic) in chapter 6.

Higgins, George E. 2010. Race, crime, and delinquency: A criminological theory approach . Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

A textbook that tackles the linkages between race and crime; each chapter introduces a salient theoretical approach and the authors’ assumptions about race, crime, and delinquency. Chapter 6 presents conflict and racial threat theory and would be a great starting point for undergraduates interested in these issues.

Weitzer, Ronald, and Steven A. Tuch. 2006. Race and policing in America: Conflict and reform . New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.

DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511617256

Introductory chapter provides a good overview of social threat. The authors’ central findings from their elaborate study of police and race relations is that race matters a great deal—blacks have the most critical views of the police, whites express positive views, and Hispanics fall between the two.

back to top

Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login .

Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here .

• About Criminology »
• Meet the Editorial Board »
• Active Offender Research
• Adler, Freda
• Adversarial System of Justice
• Adverse Childhood Experiences
• Aging Prison Population, The
• Airport and Airline Security
• Alcohol and Drug Prohibition
• Alcohol Use, Policy and Crime
• Alt-Right Gangs and White Power Youth Groups
• Animals, Crimes Against
• Back-End Sentencing and Parole Revocation
• Bail and Pretrial Detention
• Batterer Intervention Programs
• Bentham, Jeremy
• Big Data and Communities and Crime
• Biosocial Criminology
• Black's Theory of Law and Social Control
• Blumstein, Alfred
• Boot Camps and Shock Incarceration Programs
• Burglary, Residential
• Bystander Intervention
• Capital Punishment
• Chambliss, William
• Chicago School of Criminology, The
• Child Maltreatment
• Chinese Triad Society
• Civil Protection Orders
• Collateral Consequences of Felony Conviction and Imprisonm...
• Collective Efficacy
• Commercial and Bank Robbery
• Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children
• Communicating Scientific Findings in the Courtroom
• Community Change and Crime
• Community Corrections
• Community Disadvantage and Crime
• Community-Based Justice Systems
• Community-Based Substance Use Prevention
• Comparative Criminal Justice Systems
• CompStat Models of Police Performance Management
• Confessions, False and Coerced
• Conservation Criminology
• Consumer Fraud
• Contextual Analysis of Crime
• Control Balance Theory
• Convict Criminology
• Co-Offending and the Role of Accomplices
• Corporate Crime
• Costs of Crime and Justice
• Courts, Drug
• Courts, Juvenile
• Courts, Mental Health
• Courts, Problem-Solving
• Crime and Justice in Latin America
• Crime, Campus
• Crime Control Policy
• Crime Control, Politics of
• Crime, (In)Security, and Islam
• Crime Prevention, Delinquency and
• Crime Prevention, Situational
• Crime Prevention, Voluntary Organizations and
• Crime Trends
• Crime Victims' Rights Movement
• Criminal Career Research
• Criminal Decision Making, Emotions in
• Criminal Justice Data Sources
• Criminal Justice Ethics
• Criminal Justice Fines and Fees
• Criminal Justice Reform, Politics of
• Criminal Justice System, Discretion in the
• Criminal Records
• Criminal Retaliation
• Criminal Talk
• Criminology of Genocide, The
• Critical Criminology
• Cross-National Crime
• Cross-Sectional Research Designs in Criminology and Crimin...
• Cultural Criminology
• Cultural Theories
• Cybercrime Investigations and Prosecutions
• Cycle of Violence
• Deadly Force
• Defense Counsel
• Defining "Success" in Corrections and Reentry
• Developmental and Life-Course Criminology
• Digital Piracy
• Driving and Traffic Offenses
• Drug Control
• Drug Trafficking, International
• Drugs and Crime
• Elder Abuse
• Electronically Monitored Home Confinement
• Employee Theft
• Environmental Crime and Justice
• Experimental Criminology
• Family Violence
• Felon Disenfranchisement
• Feminist Theories
• Feminist Victimization Theories
• Fencing and Stolen Goods Markets
• Firearms and Violence
• Forensic Science
• For-Profit Private Prisons and the Criminal Justice–Indust...
• Gangs, Peers, and Co-offending
• Gender and Crime
• Gendered Crime Pathways
• General Opportunity Victimization Theories
• Genetics, Environment, and Crime
• Green Criminology
• Halfway Houses
• Harm Reduction and Risky Behaviors
• Hate Crime Legislation
• Healthcare Fraud
• Hirschi, Travis
• History of Crime in the United Kingdom
• History of Criminology
• Homelessness and Crime
• Homicide Victimization
• Honor Cultures and Violence
• Hot Spots Policing
• Human Rights
• Human Trafficking
• Identity Theft
• Incarceration, Mass
• Incarceration, Public Health Effects of
• Income Tax Evasion
• Indigenous Criminology
• Institutional Anomie Theory
• Integrated Theory
• Intermediate Sanctions
• Interpersonal Violence, Historical Patterns of
• Interrogation
• Intimate Partner Violence, Criminological Perspectives on
• Intimate Partner Violence, Police Responses to
• Investigation, Criminal
• Juvenile Delinquency
• Juvenile Justice System, The
• Kornhauser, Ruth Rosner
• Labeling Theory
• Labor Markets and Crime
• Land Use and Crime
• Lead and Crime
• LGBTQ Intimate Partner Violence
• LGBTQ People in Prison
• Life Without Parole Sentencing
• Local Institutions and Neighborhood Crime
• Lombroso, Cesare
• Longitudinal Research in Criminology
• Mandatory Minimum Sentencing
• Mapping and Spatial Analysis of Crime, The
• Mass Media, Crime, and Justice
• Measuring Crime
• Mediation and Dispute Resolution Programs
• Mental Health and Crime
• Merton, Robert K.
• Meta-analysis in Criminology
• Middle-Class Crime and Criminality
• Migrant Detention and Incarceration
• Mixed Methods Research in Criminology
• Money Laundering
• Motor Vehicle Theft
• Multi-Level Marketing Scams
• Murder, Serial
• Narrative Criminology
• National Deviancy Symposia, The
• Nature Versus Nurture
• Neighborhood Disorder
• Neutralization Theory
• New Penology, The
• Offender Decision-Making and Motivation
• Offense Specialization/Expertise
• Organized Crime
• Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs
• Panel Methods in Criminology
• Peacemaking Criminology
• Peer Networks and Delinquency
• Performance Measurement and Accountability Systems
• Personality and Trait Theories of Crime
• Persons with a Mental Illness, Police Encounters with
• Phenomenological Theories of Crime
• Plea Bargaining
• Police Administration
• Police Cooperation, International
• Police Discretion
• Police Effectiveness
• Police History
• Police Militarization
• Police Misconduct
• Police, Race and the
• Police Use of Force
• Police, Violence against the
• Policing and Law Enforcement
• Policing, Body-Worn Cameras and
• Policing, Broken Windows
• Policing, Community and Problem-Oriented
• Policing Cybercrime
• Policing, Evidence-Based
• Policing, Intelligence-Led
• Policing, Privatization of
• Policing, Proactive
• Policing, School
• Policing, Stop-and-Frisk
• Policing, Third Party
• Polyvictimization
• Positivist Criminology
• Pretrial Detention, Alternatives to
• Pretrial Diversion
• Prison Administration
• Prison Classification
• Prison, Disciplinary Segregation in
• Prison Education Exchange Programs
• Prison Gangs and Subculture
• Prison History
• Prison Labor
• Prison Visitation
• Prisoner Reentry
• Prisons and Jails
• Prisons, HIV in
• Private Security
• Probation Revocation
• Procedural Justice
• Property Crime
• Prosecution and Courts
• Prostitution
• Psychiatry, Psychology, and Crime: Historical and Current ...
• Psychology and Crime
• Public Criminology
• Public Opinion, Crime and Justice
• Public Order Crimes
• Public Social Control and Neighborhood Crime
• Punishment Justification and Goals
• Qualitative Methods in Criminology
• Queer Criminology
• Race and Sentencing Research Advancements
• Racial Threat Hypothesis
• Rape and Sexual Assault
• Rape, Fear of
• Rational Choice Theories
• Rehabilitation
• Religion and Crime
• Restorative Justice
• Risk Assessment
• Routine Activity Theories
• School Bullying
• School Crime and Violence
• School Safety, Security, and Discipline
• Search Warrants
• Seasonality and Crime
• Self-Control, The General Theory:
• Self-Report Crime Surveys
• Sentencing Enhancements
• Sentencing, Evidence-Based
• Sentencing Guidelines
• Sentencing Policy
• Sex Offender Policies and Legislation
• Sex Trafficking
• Sexual Revictimization
• Situational Action Theory
• Snitching and Use of Criminal Informants
• Social and Intellectual Context of Criminology, The
• Social Construction of Crime, The
• Social Control of Tobacco Use
• Social Control Theory
• Social Disorganization
• Social Ecology of Crime
• Social Learning Theory
• Social Networks
• Social Threat and Social Control
• Solitary Confinement
• South Africa, Crime and Justice in
• Sport Mega-Events Security
• Stalking and Harassment
• State Crime
• State Dependence and Population Heterogeneity in Theories ...
• Strain Theories
• Street Code
• Street Robbery
• Substance Use and Abuse
• Surveillance, Public and Private
• Sutherland, Edwin H.
• Technology and the Criminal Justice System
• Technology, Criminal Use of
• Terrorism and Hate Crime
• Terrorism, Criminological Explanations for
• Testimony, Eyewitness
• Therapeutic Jurisprudence
• Trajectory Methods in Criminology
• Transnational Crime
• Truth-In-Sentencing
• Urban Politics and Crime
• US War on Terrorism, Legal Perspectives on the
• Victim Impact Statements
• Victimization, Adolescent
• Victimization, Biosocial Theories of
• Victimization Patterns and Trends
• Victimization, Repeat
• Victimization, Vicarious and Related Forms of Secondary Tr...
• Victimless Crime
• Victim-Offender Overlap, The
• Violence Against Women
• Violence, Youth
• Violent Crime
• White-Collar Crime
• White-Collar Crime, The Global Financial Crisis and
• White-Collar Crime, Women and
• Wilson, James Q.
• Wolfgang, Marvin
• Women, Girls, and Reentry
• Wrongful Conviction
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy
• Legal Notice
• Accessibility

Powered by:

• [66.249.64.20|109.248.223.228]
• 109.248.223.228

• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar

Criminal Justice

IResearchNet

Academic Writing Services

Social control theory.

Social control theory assumes that people can see the advantages of crime and are capable of inventing and executing all sorts of criminal acts on the spot—without special motivation or prior training. It assumes that the impulse to commit crime is resisted because of the costs associated with such behavior. It assumes further that a primary cost of crime is the disapproval of the people about whom the potential offender cares. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

I. Introduction

Ii. attachment, iii. commitment, iv. involvement, vi. historical development, vii. similarities and differences between social control theories and other major theories of crime, viii. a critical issue, ix. theoretical and research extensions, x. policy implications.

The social control approach to understanding crime is one of the three major sociological perspectives in contemporary criminology. Control theorists believe that conformity to the rules of society is produced by socialization and maintained by ties to people and institutions— to family members, friends, schools, and jobs. Put briefly, crime and delinquency result when the individual’s bond to society is weak or broken. As social bonds increase in strength, the costs of crime to the individual increase as well.

The first task of the control theorist is to identify the important elements of the bond to society. The second task is to say what is meant by society—to locate the persons and institutions important in the control of delinquent and criminal behavior. The following list of elements of the bond— attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief—has proved useful in explaining the logic of the theory and in summarizing relevant research. It has also provided guidelines for evaluation of delinquency prevention programs.

Social control theory assumes that people can see the advantages of crime and are capable of inventing and executing all sorts of criminal acts on the spot—without special motivation or prior training. It assumes that the impulse to commit crime is resisted because of the costs associated with such behavior. It assumes further that a primary cost of crime is the disapproval of the people about whom the potential offender cares. To the extent that the potential offender cares about no one, he or she is free to commit the crime in question. Sociologists often explain conformity as the result of such sensitivity. Psychologists as often explain deviation as the result of insensitivity to the concerns of others. Together, they tell us that sensitivity is a continuum and that some people have more than others and some have less than others. This is the position adopted by control theorists. They focus on the extent to which people are sensitive to the opinion of others and predict that this variable will predict rates of crime and delinquency.

Sensitivity suggests feeling or emotion, and this element of the social bond indeed attempts to capture the emotions (or lack thereof) involved in conformity and deviance. The words are many: affection, love, concern, care, and respect, to name only some. Social control theorists use attachment as an abstract summary of these concepts.

The evidence is clear that family attachments are strongly correlated with (non)delinquency. In their famous book Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency, Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck (1950) indicated that, according to their research, affection of the father and the mother for the child were two of the best five predictors of delinquency. They found, too, that in the other direction, the emotional ties of the child to the parent tended to be weaker among delinquents. From this, we may conclude that family attachments play a role in the socialization of the child as well as in maintaining his or her subsequent conformity to the rules of society. Researchers have reported that family attachments may account for the apparent effects of other variables. For example, the item “Do your parents know where you are (and what you are doing) when you are away from home?” has been often found to predict levels of self-reported delinquency. These correlations are of course taken as evidence of the importance of parental supervision. They are better seen as evidence of the importance of communication between parent and child. Scandinavian scholars have shown that parents know where their children are to the extent that their children inform them of their whereabouts. In other words, well-supervised children are those who supervise themselves, those who in effect take their parents with them wherever they happen to go.

Attachment to school is also a well-established predictor of delinquency. Students who report liking school and caring about the opinion of teachers are far less likely to be delinquent regardless of how delinquency is measured. Indeed, it is practically a truism that “delinquents don’t like school.” The general principle would seem to be that withdrawal of favorable sentiments toward controlling institutions neutralizes their moral force. Rebels and revolutionaries may dispute this principle, but that says nothing about the element of truth it contains (and they prove it by their actions).

Everyone seems to understand the paraphrased song lyric that freedom is another way of saying that one has nothing left to lose. Control theory captures this idea in the concept of commitment, the idea that conforming behavior protects and preserves capital, whereas crime and delinquency put it at risk. The potential delinquent calculates the costs and benefits of crime. The more he or she has to lose, the greater the potential costs of the crime and the less likely it is to be committed. What does one lose or risk losing from crime? The short answer is life, liberty, and property. The long answer, attachments aside, is that it depends on one’s assets and prospects, on one’s accomplishments and aspirations.

For young people in American society, the main arena for the display of accomplishment or achievement is the school. Athletics aside, and however diverse the curriculum, the currency of this realm is academic achievement. Also, truancy aside, of the available measures of school-related activities, grade point average appears to be the best predictor of delinquency. Good students are likely to aspire to further education and are unlikely to commit delinquent acts or to get into difficulties with the police. Grade point average accounts for the correlation between IQ test scores and delinquency. Put another way, IQ affects delinquency through its effect of grades. It has no direct effect on delinquency. This means that the ancient idea that, other things equal, intelligent people are better able to appreciate the consequences of their acts is not supported by the data; instead, the data suggest that the correspondence between achievement and prospects on one side and delinquency on the other is just what one would expect from rational actors, whatever their level of intelligence.

In television courtrooms, one task of the prosecutor is to establish that the defendant had the opportunity to commit the crime of which he or she is accused. Crimes are events that take place at a given point in time. Conditions necessary for their accomplishment may or may not be present. Control theorists, like most other theorists, have seized on this fact and tried to incorporate the notion of opportunity into their explanation of crime. They do so through the concept of involvement, which is short for “involvement in conventional activities.” The idea is that people doing conventional things—working, playing games, watching sporting events or television, doing homework, engaging in hobbies, or talking to parents—are to that extent unable to commit delinquent acts, whatever their delinquent tendencies may be.

Despite its firm place in the common sense of criminology, the idea of involvement/limited opportunity has not fared well when put to the test. More than one researcher has found that adolescents with jobs are more rather than less likely to be delinquent. Also, counts of the hours of the day the adolescent is doing an activity that is inconsistent with delinquent acts have proved disappointing.

There are two problems with the concept of involvement. First, it is based on a misconception of the nature of crime. Most criminal acts, perhaps especially those available to adolescents, require only seconds or minutes for their completion—the pull of the trigger, a swing of the fist, a barked command, a jimmied door, a grab from a rack or showcase. This fact allows the commission of large numbers of criminal acts by a single offender in a short period of time. (It also makes ridiculous attempts to estimate the average number of offenses committed by individual offenders in an extended period of time.) Because opportunities for crimes are ubiquitous, the hope of preventing them by otherwise occupying the potential offender has proved vain.

A second problem with this concept is that it neglects the fact that opportunities for crime reside to a large extent in the eye of the beholder. Objective conditions matter, but so do the perceptions of actors. Control theory claims that people differ in the strength of their bonds to society. It therefore predicts that people who are strongly bonded are less likely to engage in activities that provide opportunities for delinquency and are less likely to see them should they arise.

The role of beliefs in the causation of delinquency is a matter of considerable dispute. Some social scientists argue that they are of central importance. Others ignore them, suggesting that they are nothing more than words that reflect (and justify) past behavior but are in no way responsible for it. Control theory rejects the view that beliefs are positive causes of delinquency, that offenders are somehow living up to their beliefs when they commit delinquent acts. Control theory is, however, compatible with the view that some beliefs prevent delinquency while others allow it.

Perhaps the principal benefit of the study of beliefs is that they help us understand how the other bonds work to prevent delinquency. For example, responses to the statement “People who break the law are almost always caught and punished” are related to delinquency in the expected direction. Individuals who disagree are more likely to report delinquent acts. What can be said about the factual accuracy of this belief? Do delinquents know the truth while non-delinquents have been systematically misinformed? The answer appears to be that both delinquents and non-delinquents are correct, at least from their point of view. In the short term, “getting away with it” may well be the rule. In the long term, offenders are typically caught and, in various ways, punished. A short-term orientation reflects a lack of commitment and is therefore conducive to delinquency. A long-term orientation is indicative of commitment and prevents delinquency. All of this teaches two lessons: (1) Manipulating beliefs without changing the reality on which they are based is unlikely to reduce the level of delinquency, and (2) changing actual levels of law enforcement efficiency is unlikely to change the beliefs that allow and disallow criminal conduct.

The intellectual underpinnings of social control theory may be seen in the 17th-century work of Thomas Hobbes. In his famous book Leviathan Hobbes described a set of basic assumptions about human nature and the origins of civil society. Hobbes believed that humans naturally seek personal advantage without regard for the rights or concerns of others. In the absence of external restraints, in a state of nature, crime is a rational choice, a “war of all against all” naturally follows, and the life of everyone is “nasty, poor, brutish, and short.” Fortunately, in Hobbes’s view, a second choice presents itself to individuals capable of calculating the costs and benefits of their actions. They can continue in a state of war, or they can establish a system of laws and a government empowered to punish those who resort to force and fraud in pursuit of their private interests. Given the choice between war and peace, rational people choose to submit to government authority in return for the safety of their persons and property.

Hobbes’s theory of crime is a choice theory. People consider the costs and benefits of crime and act accordingly. The important costs of crime are those exacted by the state—which has the power to deprive citizens of life, liberty, and property. The content of the criminal law is not problematic. There is consensus that the use of force and fraud for private purposes is illegitimate. Crime is real. It is a not a matter of definition; it is not a social construction that may vary from time to time and place to place.

As we have seen, social control theory accepts choice and consensus. People are not forced by unusual needs or desires to commit criminal acts. Belief in the validity of the core of the criminal law is shared by everyone. Control theory nevertheless rejects Hobbes’s view (which is still a popular view among economists and political scientists) that the important costs of crime are the penalties imposed by the state. It can reject this view because of the assumption (and fact) of consensus. Everyone agrees that theft, robbery, and murder are crimes. As a result, victims and witnesses report offenses to interested parties, and their perpetrators embarrass and shame those who know them. Shame and the penalties that follow from it are, according to social control theory, major costs of crime.

Hobbes’s view of human nature does not imply that people are inherently criminal or that they prefer crime; it suggests only that self-interest underlies whatever they do. They harm others because it gives them pleasure or advantage. They steal because stealing provides goods or money. They hit or threaten to hit others because such acts may bring status, a feeling of justice, or control of their behavior. They do good things for self-interested reasons as well. They are trustworthy and helpful because being so brings such rewards as trust and gratitude. From the point of view of their motives, there is thus no difference between offenders and non-offenders, between criminal and noncriminal acts; all reflect the same basic desires. Thus, working from the Hobbesian view of human nature, social control theories do not ask why people commit criminal acts. They ask instead why, given the plentiful opportunities for criminal acts and their obvious benefits, people do not commit more of them.

Sociology is the dominant discipline in the study of crime. Sociologists reject Hobbes’s perspective. They see human behavior as caused rather than chosen. They tend to reject the idea of consensus, preferring the idea of cultural diversity or even culture conflict. Nevertheless, in the early years of the 20th century, sociologists in the United States often talked about social disorganization, the breakdown of society they saw occurring in immigrant communities and the slums of large cities. The high rates of crime and delinquency in these areas were seen as symptoms of this breakdown. In disorganized areas, unemployment is high and families, schools, and neighborhoods are too weak to control the behavior of their residents. The theory of crime implicit in the concept of social disorganization is a variety of social control theory. In the absence of the usual social restraints imposed by jobs, families, schools, churches, and neighborhoods, delinquency flourishes. In other words, delinquency is natural, as Hobbes suggested and, worse— but contrary to Hobbes—the penalties of the criminal justice system are insufficient to contain it.

By the middle of the 20th century, the concept of social disorganization was no longer fashionable. Sociological theories had come to focus primarily on the impact of social class and culture on law-violating behavior. Lower-class adolescents were said to be forced into delinquency in their efforts to realize the American Dream or they were socialized into a lower-class culture that justifies or requires delinquent behavior. As an explanatory factor, the family had fallen from favor and the school was rarely mentioned except as an important source of strain and subsequent malicious delinquency among lower-class boys.

Sociology, however, is more than a theoretical perspective that is brought to bear in efforts to explain criminal and delinquent behavior. It is also a research discipline that attempts to locate the causes and correlates of such behavior. While sociological theories of delinquency were painting one picture of delinquency, research was painting a very different picture, and sociological researchers were forced to use or invent a sociologically incorrect language to describe it.

By the mid-20th century, hundreds of studies of delinquency had been published, and the number was growing at an ever-increasing rate. With respect to its findings, perhaps the most important was the work of a Harvard University couple, Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck. Their book Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency (1950), discussed earlier in this research paper, is unrivaled in the scope and complexity of its results. The Gluecks compared 500 delinquent boys with 500 non-delinquent boys on a large number of carefully measured variables: family structure and relations, school attitudes and performance, physical and mental characteristics, and attitudes and behavior. The Gluecks reported that the five best predictors of delinquency were “family” variables: (1) discipline of the boy by his father, (2) supervision of the boy by his mother, (3) affection of the father (and [4], separately, the mother) for the boy, and (5) cohesiveness of the family.

The Gluecks’s research was said to be atheoretical, and they did not advertise themselves as theorists, but there could be no doubt that their findings supported social control theory. There also could be no doubt that their characterization of their findings reflected acceptance of a control theory perspective—and rejection of then-popular sociological theories. (For example, whereas popular sociological theories assumed that delinquents tend to be eager to succeed in school, the Gluecks reported that truancy and “lack of interest in school work” were from an early age one of their defining characteristics.) In one fell swoop, then, the Gluecks put control theory back on the table.

The Gluecks were not alone; other researchers were reporting results consistent with control theory and using the language of the theory to interpret them. Albert Reiss resurrected the distinction found in the social disorganization literature between personal and social controls. Walter Reckless and colleagues advanced a containment theory of delinquency that was said to account for the behavior of “good” as well as “bad” boys. Jackson Toby introduced the idea of stakes in conformity—the costs of delinquency to people with good reputations and bright prospects—as an important factor in the control of delinquent behavior.

During the same mid-20th century period, social control theory benefited from introduction of an innovative technique of research, what came to be known as the self-report method. Prior to the invention of this method, researchers had been forced to rely on official measures of delinquency, basically police and court records. The new method allowed them to ask juveniles about their delinquent activities regardless of whether they had official records. It allowed researchers at the same time to ask young people about their relationships with parents, their attitudes toward school, and much else of interest to those wishing to explain delinquent behavior. Indeed, this research technique put the explanation of delinquency in a new light. For example, whereas the Gluecks stressed the affection of the parent for the child, it now became apparent—because it could be measured—that the affection of the child for the parent should be equally, if not more, important.

Relying on the terms and assumptions of the social disorganization perspective, F. Ivan Nye (1958) undertook the first major self-report study of delinquency, distinguishing between internal control and direct and indirect forms of social control. Nye’s particular focus was on the family. He showed how parents limit access of their children to opportunities for delinquency (an example of a direct control) and how adolescents refrain from delinquency out of concern that their parents might disapprove of such actions (an indirect control). He illustrated internal control with the concept of conscience, which acts to prevent one from committing acts that are harmful to others.

The various strands of thought and research on social control were brought together in Travis Hirschi’s Causes of Delinquency, published in 1969. This book reports in a study of a large sample of junior and senior high school students using self-report and official measures of delinquency. The theory guiding the study, as well as some of the study’s findings, are summarized at the beginning of this research paper. Hirschi’s study was a small part of a larger study based on ideas compatible with alternative theories of delinquency. Hirschi was therefore able to compare and contrast the predictions of social control theory with those stemming from its major competitors. These comparisons and contrasts have proved useful in providing structure to subsequent research.

As we have seen, the underlying assumptions of social control theory are in many respects similar to those of classical theories of crime, theories that have come down to us under such names as deterrence theory and rational choice theory. The differences among them are often differences in emphasis. Deterrence theory claims that the key to crime control is found in the swiftness, severity, and certainty of the punishments administered by the legal system. Rational choice theory focuses on the costs and benefits of crime. Control theorists accept the importance of punishment, but they ignore the punishments of the legal system and thereby question their role in the control of crime. They do the same with benefits of crime—that is, they ignore them on the grounds that the benefits of crime are the same as the benefits of non-crime.

The assumptions of control theories contrast sharply with those of other sociological explanations of crime. Cultural deviance or social learning theories assume that there is no natural capacity for crime. In their view, all human action, whether crime or conformity, is the product of a combination of socializing influences. Peers exert influence on the individual, as does the family and, more broadly, the prevailing culture. Where the sum total of influences directs the individual in particular instances to engage in crime, then that person will do so. Where these influences are absent, crime cannot occur. The offender is thus a conformist, albeit not to the rules of the dominant society.

Strain theories (sometimes called anomie theories) assume that an individual is naturally inclined to conform to standard cultural values but can be pushed into crime when the social structure fails to provide legitimate opportunities to succeed. These theorists emphasize the influence of the American Dream, which produces aspirations and desires that often (all too often, scholars say) cannot be satisfied within the limits of the law. These sociological perspectives have proved popular and adaptable. They continue to provide a foundation for critiques of social control theory.

One question that social control theory has faced from its inception relates to the role of delinquent peers. Walter Reckless (1961), a prominent theorist whose work is usually associated with control theory, concluded from the Gluecks’s (1950) data that “companionship is unquestionably the most telling force in male delinquency and crime” (p. 10). If this conclusion were allowed to stand unquestioned, whatever debate there might be between social control theory and social learning theory would be settled in favor of the latter. From the beginning, control theorists have questioned the meaning of the admittedly strong correlation between one’s own delinquency and the delinquency of one’s friends. Their major counterhypothesis was that advanced by the Gluecks, who interpreted their own data as showing that birds of a feather flock together, so to speak. In control theory terms, this argument is that weak bonds to society lead to association with delinquents and to delinquent behavior. Companionship and delinquency thus have a common cause. The limits of this argument were readily apparent. The correlation between companionship and delinquency was so strong that no combination of its supposed causes could possibly account for it. Social learning theorists naturally saw this as evidence against social control theory and in favor of their own theory. A compromise solution was to integrate the two theories, the idea being that lack of social control frees the adolescent to be taught crime and delinquency by his or her peers.

Hirschi resisted this compromise, observing that the two theories, if combined, would contain fatal internal contradictions. Social control theories assume that crime is natural. Social learning theories assume crime must be learned. The two assumptions cannot peacefully coexist, because one assumption must necessarily negate the other. Yet the delinquent-peer effect would not go away. Its presence forced social control theorists to confront a fact seemingly in contradiction to the theory’s internal logic. Attempts were then made to explain the role of delinquent peers without violating the assumptions of control theory. Perhaps peers do not teach delinquency, but they make it easier or less risky, thus increasing the temptation to crime by lowering its costs. Assaults and robberies and burglaries are, after all, facilitated by the support of others, just as they are facilitated by muscles and guns and agility.

Another tack was to question the validity of the measures of peer delinquency. If the data collection methods were faulty, then the seemingly strong evidence supporting the delinquent peers–delinquency correlation could also be faulty. Most studies of the delinquency of peers ask the respondents to describe their friends. The results, some researchers argued, could reflect the phenomenon of projection, whereby study respondents, apparently describing their friends, are in fact describing themselves. Dana Haynie and Wayne Osgood (2005) tested this hypothesis. They reported that standard data do contain a good quantity of projection. Using measures of delinquency collected directly from the peers in question, they found that what was once the strongest known predictor of crime turned out to have only a modest effect, an effect that could be accounted for by alternative theories of crime. This story teaches several lessons. Persistent attention to a theoretical problem may produce unexpected results. The facts that are at the root of the problem may themselves fail to survive, and the end results of criticisms of a criminological theory do not necessarily take the form imagined by its critics.

In its social disorganization form, social control theory was what is now called a life course theory. The idea was straightforward: Individuals are controlled by ties to the significant people and institutions in their lives. As they move through the various stages of life, these people and institutions automatically change. Their significance and the strength of the individual’s ties to them may change as well. The favorite example was the transition from the family of orientation, with parents and siblings, to the family of procreation, with a spouse and children. In principle, the transition from one family to the other could be a period of deregulation, of relative freedom from social bonds and a consequent high rate of delinquency. In principle, successful completion of this transition was problematic. The adolescent could end up securely wrapped in the arms of job, church, community, and family, or he or she could end up in a stage of protracted adolescence, with weak and fleeting ties to the central institutions of adulthood. Adolescent delinquents could easily end up as law-abiding adults, and adolescent conformists could easily end up as late-starting adult offenders.

The social control theory described was based on data collected at one point in time. It could not therefore deal directly with questions of change and transition. It was designed, however, with the change and transition problem firmly in mind. If the connection between juvenile delinquency and adult crime depended on events that could not be foreseen, this posed no problem for the theory. It assumed that strong bonds could weaken, or break, that the people and institutions to which one was tied could change their character or cease to exist. It assumed, too, that weak bonds could strengthen, that they could be established where none previously existed. Social control theory was thus seen as the only major theory capable of dealing with variation in levels of crime and delinquency over the life course.

Readily available data suggested, however, that the facts were not so complicated. The data suggested that differences in levels of delinquency were relatively constant across individuals, that the form of the age distribution of crime was the same from one group to another. As a result, in 1983, Hirschi and his colleague Michael Gottfredson explicitly rejected the life course perspective on crime, declaring that criminality, once established in late childhood, stabilized and did not change. Put another way, they said that if a researcher ranks children on their propensity to commit criminal acts at age 8, he or she will find the same rank order when the children are 15 and any age thereafter. They concluded that no criminological theory, including social control theory, could explain the relation between age and crime.

Shortly thereafter, Robert Sampson and John Laub came into possession of the data originally collected by Sheldon and Eleanor Gluecks in the famous study described earlier. After reworking and supplementing these data, they were able to follow the Gluecks’s (1950) participants into adulthood and, by so doing, restate and test the life course (or longitudinal) version of social control theory, which they called a theory of informal social control. Analyses reported in their book Crime in the Making (1993) confirm the Gluecks’s findings about the correlates of delinquency and move on to a focus on stability and change in levels of delinquency during adulthood. Their analyses (and subsequent analyses based on even more extensive data) confirm the importance for delinquency involvement of such adult social bonds as income, marriage, attachment to spouse, job stability, and commitment. It should be mentioned that their analyses of full-life histories reveal a substantial decline in crime with age that their bond measures cannot explain.

Current crime control policy in the United States emphasizes the value of incarceration on the one side and treatment or rehabilitation on the other. Increased rates of incarceration have been encouraged by renewed academic interest in so-called “career criminals” and by the view that crime control requires swift, certain, and severe punishment by agents of the criminal justice system. The emphasis on punishment is encouraged by politicians, the media, an influential segment of academic criminology, and of course by law enforcement officials themselves. The crime problem is a blessing to all of them, and they do not fail to take advantage of it.

Increased levels of concern and punishment automatically produce greater numbers of potential offenders, probationers, inmates, and parolees—all of whom are thought to benefit from exposure to modern treatment and rehabilitation programs. The emphasis on treatment is encouraged by the belief that it provides a humane alternative to punishment. It is also encouraged by renewed faith in its effectiveness in reducing subsequent involvement in criminal and delinquent behavior. Where it was recently believed that treatment does not work, the question of effectiveness is now answered in advance by advocacy of evidence-based programs. An emphasis on treatment is a blessing for psychologists, social workers, and social service agencies.

Support for neither of these general policies is found in social control theory. Consistent with the theory, potential offenders are not influenced by the threat of legal penalties, and their behavior is not altered by changing the certainty or severity of such penalties. Consistent with the theory, the behavior of people exposed to the criminal justice system is not affected by such exposure. The level of punishment (e.g., the length of sentence) imposed by the system does not affect the likelihood that its wards will be seen again. Put another way, the criminal justice system receives people after they have committed offenses, but it has little or no influence on their prior or subsequent behavior.

Incarceration is sometimes justified on the grounds that it reduces the crime rate by incapacitating offenders. Even if punishment and treatment do not work, the argument goes, people in prison are not committing countable crimes while they are there, though a derivation of this argument from any version of control theory is not supportable.

The idea that crime can be prevented by treating or rehabilitating offenders is contrary to the assumptions of control theory. The theory sees crime as a choice that does not reflect illness or defective judgment but the social circumstances of the actor and the logic of the situation. The renewed enthusiasm for treatment is also not justified by research. As often as not, it seems, the difference between the treatment and control groups is disappointing, or even in the wrong direction. Given the investment in various treatment strategies and the felt need to counterbalance punitive policies, the return of a skeptical view of treatment in the near future is unlikely, but better evidence that treatment works will be required to make it a serious challenge to the control theory perspective.

Crime control strategies that go by such names as situational crime prevention, the routine activity approach, and environmental design are perfectly compatible with control theory. All assume that crimes may be prevented by focusing on the conditions necessary for their occurrence—by reducing their benefits, by making them more hazardous or difficult. Unlike control theory, these approaches focus on one type of crime at a time—burglary, robbery, assault—but they, too, see the potential offender as acting out of choice rather than compulsion. A choosing offender may attack a lone individual but will not consider attacking a member of a group; a choosing offender may enter an unlocked door but refrain from breaking down a door that is securely locked. The beauty of these approaches is that, to the extent they are successful, they eliminate criminals by eliminating crime. Situational crime prevention theorists like to say that “opportunity makes the thief,” but a more direct statement of their position would be that “theft makes the thief.”

Social control theories typically do not provide specific positive guidance about crime control policy. Those who attack their policy implications tend to focus on the odious implications of “control,” suggesting that control theorists favor selective incapacitation and value thoughtless conformity over individual freedom. It may be partly for this reason that control theorists are reluctant to play the policy game, but it may be that the policy implications of control theory are too obvious to bear repeating. If weakened social bonds are the reason crime flourishes, the straightforward way to reduce the crime problem would be to help individuals intensify their relationships with society. How is this to be accomplished? Control theory cannot provide particularly good answers to this question anymore than strain theory can offer unusual insight about how to improve economic conditions among the poor. We do know that stakes in conformity cannot be imposed from without, that society cannot force friends on the friendless. But we know, too, that some conditions are more conducive than others to the creation and maintenance of the natural bonds that make people consider the consequences of their acts for the lives and well-being of others. With such conditions in place, the theory claims, the need for crime control policies is greatly reduced.

References:

• Akers, R. L., & Sellers, C. S. (2004). Criminological theories: Introduction, evaluation, and application. Thousand Oaks, CA: Roxbury.
• Demuth, S., & Brown, S. L. (2004). Family structure, family processes, and adolescent delinquency: The significance of parental absence versus parental gender. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 41, 58–81.
• Elliott, D. S., Huizinga, D., & Ageton, S. (1985). Explaining delinquency and drug use. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
• Feldman, S. S., & Weinberger, D. A. (1994). Self-restraint as a mediator of family influences on boys’ delinquent behavior: A longitudinal study. Child Development, 65, 195–211.
• Felson, M. (1998). Crime and everyday life. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge.
• Glueck, S., & Glueck, E. (1950). Unraveling juvenile delinquency. New York: Commonwealth Fund.
• Gottfredson, M. R., & Hirschi, T. (1990). A general theory of crime. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
• Haynie, D., & Osgood, D.W. (2005). Reconsidering peers and delinquency: How do peers matter? Social Forces, 84, 1109–1130.
• Hirschi, T. (1969). Causes of delinquency. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Hirschi, T., & Gottfredson, M. (1983). Age and the explanation of crime. American Journal of Sociology, 89, 552–584.
• Hirschi, T., & Gottfredson, M. (1995). Control theory and the life-course perspective. Studies on Crime and Crime Prevention, 4, 131–142.
• Kornhauser, R. R. (1978). Social sources of delinquency. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Krohn, M. D., & Massey, J. L. (1980). Social control and delinquent behavior: An examination of the elements of the social bond. Sociological Quarterly, 21, 529–554.
• Matos, P. M., Barbosa, S., de Almeida, H. M., & Costa, M. E. (1999). Parental attachment and identity in Portuguese late adolescents. Journal of Adolescence, 22, 805–813.
• Nakhaie, M. R., Silverman, R. A., & LaGrange, T. C. (2000). Self-control and social control: An examination of gender, ethnicity, class and delinquency. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 25, 35–59.
• Nye, F. I. (1958). Family relationships and delinquent behavior. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
• Reckless, W. (1961). The crime problem (3rd ed.). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
• Sampson, R. J., & Laub, J. H. (1993). Crime in the making: Pathways and turning points through life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Shakib, S., Mouttapa, M., Johnson, C.A., Ritt-Olson, A., Trinidad, D. R., Gallaher, P. E., & Unger, J. B. (2003). Ethnic variation in parenting characteristics and adolescent smoking. Journal of Adolescent Health, 33, 88–97.
• Tacon, A. M., & Caldera, Y. M. (2001). Attachment and parental correlates in late adolescent Mexican American women. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 23, 71–87.
• Wade, T. J., & Brannigan, A. (1998). The genesis of adolescent risk taking: Pathways through family, school, and peers. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 23, 1–19.
• Wright, J. P., & Cullen, F. T. ( 2001). Parental efficacy and delinquent behavior: Do control and support matter? Criminology, 39, 677–705.

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( Lock A locked padlock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

NCJRS Virtual Library

Social control explanation of the relationship between family structure and delinquent behaviour, additional details, no download available, availability, related topics.

Social Control Theory of Crime

Peer Counselor

Psychology Undergraduate, Harvard University

Fujia Sun is a first-year undergraduate studying psychology and economics at Harvard College. She has worked as a clinical psychology intern and peer counselor.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

On This Page:

The Social Control Theory was developed by Travis Hirschi in 1969. It states that an individual’s behavior is bonded by society, and the extent to which an individual feels the bond or commitment to society determines their deviance from conventional societal norms.

The theory is commonly used in criminology and aims to explore why an individual chooses not to engage (or engage) in criminal activity (Hirschi, 1967).

Usually, an individual in society would be involved in many social networks starting from childhood, such as school, work, and family. From early on in life, an individual is bonded to society, so their behavior conforms to what is expected in society.

On the other hand, macro social institutions such as religion, law, and the education system work together to maintain order in society.

The common conception is that when individuals feel a strong bond with society, they are less likely to commit a crime. As the social bonds become stronger, the costs of committing a crime also increase, and when the individual’s bond to society weakens, delinquent behaviors surface (Schreck et al., 2009). 

However, even for those who conduct delinquent behaviors, there is a general agreement that laws and rules should be followed. The Social Control Theory also looks into why this is the case.

Ideas of social control date back several centuries ago, but it wasn’t until the mid-1900s that the theory received interest from crime researchers. It was initially known as the “Social Bond Theory.”

Hirschi: Bonds of Attachment

Travis Hirschi focused on factors stopping people from committing crimes. These factors would influence the bond that an individual feels toward society. In the end, four elements – attachment, commitment, involvement, and beliefs – were identified as helpful in explaining and summarizing relevant research. 

A. Attachment

Hirschi identified attachment as the first social bond, which refers to the level of psychological affection one has for prosocial others and institutions (Hirschi, 1969).

Attachment is prosocial in its role in stopping people from committing a crime. The impulse to commit a crime can be resisted because of the costs of crime associated with delinquent behaviors. One major cost is the disapproval of people whom the potential offender cares about.

This brings in the concept of sensitivity. Psychologists argue that some people are more sensitive to the opinion of others, and the extent to which one is sensitive to others’ views will predict rates of criminal activity. Attachment is used to capture the emotions associated with committing a crime.

If a person feels no attachment or emotion to anyone in society, then theoretically, he or she would be free to conduct crimes, and there is no reason for him or her to stop.

B. Commitment

Hirschi noted that people are less likely to commit crimes when they know that they have something to lose. A potential offender would calculate the benefits and costs of crime.

If a person has invested a lot of time and energy into achieving certain accomplishments and goals, then he or she has a lot to lose if they commit a crime; the crimes are thus less likely to be committed. For example, a person could lose property, life, liberty, and money if they commit a crime.

In the case of juveniles, the display of achievements and accomplishments is seen in academics, and researchers have found that a student’s grade point average explains why IQ test scores are correlated with delinquency (Schreck & Hirschi, 2009).

The higher the student’s grade is, the less likely the student will commit crimes. Explaining using commitment, this is because the student has higher achievement and would lose more if he or she commits a crime.

C. Involvement

The third type of social bond is known as involvement, which relates to the opportunity costs associated with how a person spends their time. Involvement in conventional activities includes things such as reading, playing sports, doing homework, listening to music, watching TV, and doing housework.

If a person is heavily involved in these activities, then they have less time and energy to think about committing delinquent acts. They would also be heavily involved in social networks and hesitate to engage in criminal activity.

On the other hand, some people may spend less time doing conventional activities, experience detachment from society, and thus be more likely to commit a crime.

 D. Beliefs

The fourth and last type of social bond identified by Hirschi is belief, which refers to the degree to which one adheres to the values associated with behaviors that conform to the law; the assumption being that the more important such values are to a person, the less likely he or she is to engage in criminal/deviant behavior.

This factor has long been disputed among theorists (Schreck & Hirschi, 2009). It states that some beliefs allow delinquent behaviors while other beliefs prevent delinquency. If an individual believes in following social norms and rules, then he or she would be less likely to commit actions that violate the rules.

On the other hand, an individual who doesn’t believe in the importance or necessity of societal rules would be involved in activities that go against societal norms.

Social Control Theory Examples

1.  adolescents and minor crimes.

There has been evidence stating that the Social Control Theory explains the reason why some adolescents conduct delinquent behaviors such as the use of marijuana and other alcohol use.

Massey and Krohn conducted a study in 1980 on how the four elements of the Social Control Theory play a part in predicting alcohol/marijuana use and other forms of delinquent behavior (Krohn & Massey, 1980). 

A self-report questionnaire was given to adolescents in grades 7 through 12 in midwestern states, with 3,065 participants recruited. Questions related to maternal, paternal, and peer attachment were asked to measure the student’s scale of attachment.

An index of commitment to activities and grade point average scores were used to measure the commitment and involvement of students. Beliefs were measured using agreeableness to social norms. 

After all four factors of the Social Control Theory were measured, researchers analyzed whether the factors were correlated with the frequency of drug use and delinquent behavior.

Results showed that Social Control Theory could explain the variance in delinquency to a moderate extent and that the theory was more adequate in explaining minor offenses and drug use.

More specifically, commitment and belief variables are stronger predictors of crime for females, while attachment is more important for males.

2.  Occupational misconduct

A study by Donner et al. looked to see if the Social Control Theory could explain occupational misconduct, which meant delinquent behaviors that would be subjected to formal punishment by employer or law. Researchers looked at 111 policemen and gave them surveys asking about their likelihood of future misconduct.

Findings showed that the most severe consequences of misconduct that participants reported were linked to a commitment to one’s job. Moreover, those with higher levels of commitment to their job and social connectedness are less likely to risk their career and misbehave in their occupation.

3.  Cheating

Academic cheating has been a significant issue in schools for a long time. Researchers from China conducted a study in an attempt to use the Social Control Theory to partially explain exam cheating (Zheng & Gao, 2018).

Seven hundred and one students from universities were recruited and given questionnaires assessing parental, school, and peer attachments as well as commitments and beliefs about rules. Questions such as “How much do you feel that your friends care about you” were asked.

Results of the study indicated that positive and strong ties to the educational institution and involvement in school-related activities were associated with lower odds of cheating in an exam in the future. This is aligned with the Social Control Theory.

Factors Influencing Social Control 

Family is the first society that a child will enter. Everyone enters the world in a state of low self-control as a toddler. However, family is an “institution” where one will learn from caretakers about what is right, what is wrong, how to behave, educational choices, religious beliefs, how to treat others, and much more.

It could influence the beliefs of a child. Bonds within a family would also be a prosocial attachment because children could be afraid of disappointing their family. Decades of research on parenting and delinquent behavior have also found that parenting type will influence a child’s likelihood of conducting future crimes.

More specifically, Diana Baumrind found that authoritarian parents who are high on responsiveness and demandingness to their child are the best for a child’s development.

These parents have a stronger bond with their child, who needs support and control. This type of parenting is positively related to social adjustment and negatively related to misconduct and delinquency (Baumrind, 1971).

The community and neighborhood that a person lives in could influence rates of delinquency. It acts as a prosocial attachment bond in stopping people from committing crimes. For example, suppose the person is in a close-knit community where everyone knows one another.

In that case, committing a crime could mean disappointing or hurting people from the community. Thus, someone with a strong bond with their community would suffer more from committing a crime than someone who doesn’t care and feel no attachment to their community.

Nowadays, people are often bombarded with tons of information from the internet through modes like phone apps, television, and radio. The way the media portrays crime influences public opinion on crime and whether or not one would indulge in criminal activities.

The fear of the consequences of crime would act as a protective factor and stop potential offenders from committing a crime. Crimes are portrayed negatively in the media, which helps shape audiences’ beliefs that crime is a “bad” thing.

Public criticisms of crime seen on television or in the newspaper would make a person think twice before engaging in criminal activities.

Criticisms of Social Control Theory

One of the major criticisms faced by the Social Control Theory is that it only considers external bonds, such as bonds with social institutions or family. It fails to consider factors like autonomy, impulsiveness, or personal choices influencing delinquent behaviors.

A person could be biologically influenced and be more likely to commit violent crimes. For example, irregular serotonin and dopamine pathways could influence a person’s functions and lead them to make impulsive choices such as getting illegal drugs. The MAOA gene was also found to predict aggressive behaviors (Paul, 2020).

Social Control Theory also does not explain white-collar crime, which generally refers to white-collar workers taking advantage of their power or position for financial gains. White-collar crimes include non-violent crimes such as money laundering and healthcare corruption.

These workers usually have strong commitments and bonds to their jobs but still choose to commit crimes.

What’s more, it is hard to operationalize the intensity of bonds between an individual and society, as most research conducted is based on questionnaires answered by participants, which could potentially be biased and misleading.

By focusing on inherent individual traits and the stability of self-control, the self-control theory of crime can be seen as a critique of the social control theory’s emphasis on the external societal factors in understanding crime.

• Individual Agency vs. Societal Bonds : Self-control theory highlights intrinsic personality traits as the primary predictors of criminal behavior, emphasizing individual agency. This can be seen as a criticism of social control theory’s emphasis on external societal bonds, suggesting that even in the presence of strong societal ties, individuals with low self-control might still engage in criminal activities.
• Stability of Self-Control : Self-control theory posits that levels of self-control are established early in life and remain relatively stable. This challenges the idea that strengthening societal bonds in later life, as social control theory might advocate, would significantly reduce criminal tendencies in those with established low self-control.
• Universality of Low Self-Control : The characteristics of low self-control, such as impulsivity and preference for simple tasks, are seen as universal predictors of crime across different cultures and societies. This counters social control theory’s focus on the variability of societal norms and institutions as major determinants of criminal behavior.

Baumrind, D. (1971). Types of adolescent life-styles. Developmental Psychology Monographs , 4(1, Pt. 2). Brody, G. H., Ge, X., Conger, R. D., Gibbons, F. X., Murry, V

Cretacci, Zheng, L., & Gao, Y. (2018). Young Pandas Cheat and Smoke: A Social Control Theory Explanation of Chinese University Student’s Exam Cheating and Smoking. International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences, 13(2), 264–282. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2654315 

Donner, Maskaly, J., & Fridell, L. (2016). Social bonds and police misconduct An examination of social control theory and its relationship to workplace deviance among police supervisors. Policing : an International Journal of Police Strategies & Management , 39 (2), 416–431. https://doi.org/10.1108/PIJPSM-10-2015-0109

Hirschi, T. (1969). Causes of delinquency . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Hirschi. (2002). A Control Theory of Delinquency. In Causes of Delinquency (1st ed., pp. 16–34). Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315081649-2 

Hobbes, Thomas. 1957. Leviathan, or, The matter, forme and power of a commonwealth, ecclesiastical and civil . Edited by Michael Oakeshott. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 

Kempf-Leonard, K., & Morris, N. A. (2012, July 24). Social Control theory . obo. Retrieved December 20, 2022, from https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780195396607/obo-9780195396607-0091.xml 

Krohn, M. D., & Massey, J. L. (1980). Social Control and Delinquent Behavior: An Examination of the Elements of the Social Bond. The Sociological Quarterly, 21(4), 529–544. doi:10.1111/j.1533-8525.1980.tb00634. 

Paul, S. (2020, November 19). The criminal behavior of genes – science repository . Science Repository. from https://www.sciencerepository.org/the-criminal-behavior-of-genes 

Pratt, T. C., & Cullen, F. T. (2000). The empirical status of Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime: A meta-analysis . Criminology, 38 , 961–934.

Schreck, & Hirschi, T. (2009). Social Control Theory. In 21st Century Criminology: A Reference Handbook (Vol. 1, pp. 305–311). SAGE Publications, Inc. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412971997.n35

Wiatrowski, Michael David, “Social Control Theory and Delinquency” (1978). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 857. https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.857

Related Articles

Social Science

Hard Determinism: Philosophy & Examples (Does Free Will Exist?)

Functions of Attitude Theory

Understanding Conformity: Normative vs. Informational Social Influence

Emotions , Mood , Social Science

Emotional Labor: Definition, Examples, Types, and Consequences

Famous Experiments , Social Science

Solomon Asch Conformity Line Experiment Study

Components of Attitude: ABC Model

Social Threat and Social Control

Alternative formats available from:.

• Google Play

Read Excerpt View Table of Contents

Request Desk or Examination Copy Request a Media Review Copy

• Share this:

Table of contents

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction to the Study of Social Control Allen E. Liska

Part I: Fatal Controls

2. Toward a Threat Model of Southern Black Lynchings Stewart E. Tolnay and E. M. Beck

3. Specifying and Testing the Threat Hypothesis: Police Use of Deadly Force Allen E. Liska and Jiang Yu

Part II: Coercive Controls

4. The Reporting of Crime: A Missing Link in Conflict Theory Barbara D. Warner

5. Minority Group Threat, Social Context, and Policing Pamela Irving Jackson

6. Social Structure and Crime Control Revisited: The Declining Significance of Intergroup Threat Mitchell B. Chamlin and Allen E. Liska

7. Extralegal Influences on Imprisonment: Explaining the Direct Effects of Socioeconomic Variables James Inverarity

Part III: Beneficent Controls

8. The Mental Health and Criminal Justice Systems: Complementary Forms of Coercive Control Thomas M. Arvanites

9. Intergroup Threat and Social Control Welfare Expansion among States during the 1960s and 1970s Mitchell B. Chamlin

10. Conclusion: Developing Theoretical Issues Allen E. Liska

List of Contributors

Description

This book examines the conflict theory of social control, particularly the threat hypothesis. It asserts that deviance and crime control are responses to social threats such as criminal acts and riots, and to people perceived as threatening such as minorities and the unemployed. The authors use threat hypothesis to organize the diverse literatures on social control, use new data to resolve crucial issues, and integrate current perspectives to develop the threat proposition. They analyze patterns of deviance and crime control ranging from fatal or lethal controls such as state executions or lynching, to physical restraint such as imprisonment, to beneficient controls such as mental health hospitalization and even welfare.

Allen E. Liska is Profesor of Sociology at the State University of New York, Albany. He is the author of The Impact of Attitudes on Behavior: The Consistence Controversy and Perspectives on Deviance . He is the coeditor of Theoretical Integration in the Study of Deviance and Crime: Problems and Prospects , also published by SUNY Press.

"I agree with Liska's assessment of the state of knowledge on coflict and social control, and believe that his integrative approach is well suited to a resolution of problems in this area. Propositions generated from conflict perspectives are especially relevant to an understanding of shifts in levels of social control. Consideration of propositions that have developed out of the broad-based literature of the field will provide a clearer understanding of the linkages among control emanating from different institutional arenas. I think that Liska is on to something very important in this regard. " — Ronald A. Farrell, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• HHS Author Manuscripts

Social Learning, Self-Control, and Offending Specialization and Versatility among Friends

John h. boman, iv.

1 Department of Sociology, Bowling Green State University, 240 Williams Hall, Bowling Green, OH 43403, USA

Thomas J. Mowen

George e. higgins.

2 Department of Criminal Justice, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292, USA

While it is generally understood that people tend not to specialize in specific types of deviance, less is understood about offending specialization and versatility in the context of friendships. Using a large sample of persons nested within friendship pairs, this study’s goal is to explore how self-control and social learning theories contribute to an explanation for specialization and versatility in offending among friends. We estimate a series of multilevel, dyadic, mixed-effects models which regress offending versatility onto measures of perceptual peer versatility, self-reported peer versatility, attitudinal self-control, behavioral self-control, and demographic controls. Results indicate that higher amounts of perceptual peer versatility and peer self-reported versatility are both related to increases in versatility among friends. Lower levels of the target respondent’s attitudinal and behavioral self-control are also related to higher amounts of offending versatility. However, the peer’s self-control shares no relationship with offending versatility – a point which both supports and fails to support self-control theory’s expectations about how peer effects should operate. Learning and self-control perspectives both appear to explain offending versatility among friends. However, self-control theory’s propositions about how peer effects should operate are contradictory. The concept of opportunity may help remediate this inconsistency in Gottfredson and Hirschi’s theory.

Introduction

Although social learning and self-control theories both explain crime (e.g., Pratt & Cullen, 2000 ; Pratt et al., 2010 ), the theories are fundamentally at odds with each other. Underpinning both theoretical approaches is a fundamentally different understanding of deviant behavior. To the learning perspective, deviance – like all things – is learned. However, according to control theories, deviance is somewhat ingrained and must be restrained by the proper development of self-control. Despite what may be irreconcilable differences between the two theories, their strong and consistent ability to explain crime has led to a newer debate that focuses not on whether the theories explain crime, but instead on which theory explains crime the best. Considering research on this newer learning/control issue yields mixed results (cf. Pratt et al., 2010 ; Vazsonyi, Mikuška, & Kelley, 2017 ), criminologists must continue to develop innovative ways of exploring the predictive ability of the competing theories.

At the heart of the learning/control tension is a theoretical disagreement in the causal pathways that lead to specialization and versatility in offending. Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (1990) perspective suggests that individuals with low self-control should be versatile in offending, meaning that they should commit a wide range of different types of deviant behavior. That is, individuals with low self-control should not ‘specialize’ by repeatedly committing the same type of deviant behavior. Like most issues surrounding control and learning theories, however, Sutherland’s (1947) differential association theory and Burgess and Akers’ (1966 ; also Akers, 2009 ) social learning theory share a quite different prediction regarding the causes of specialization and versatility in offending. To a learning perspective, individuals who specialize in only one type of crime do so because they have learned values, skills, and definitions that promote committing that one type of crime. On the other hand, an individual who is versatile in their offending patterns should have learned definitions favorable to versatility. As such, offending specialization and versatility, like all forms of behavior in a learning context, is the result of a learned process.

Intertwined in the disagreement between learning and control theories is a very different set of assumptions made about friends and friendships. While both theories recognize that friends are of importance, self-control argues that any link between the behavior of friends generally, or versatility and specialization specifically, should be the result of similarity in the friends’ levels of self-control (e.g., Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990 , pp. 157–159). Social learning theory, on the other hand, would argue that the offending versatility or specialization patterns of friends should directly influence an individual’s patterns of behavior (see Akers, 2009 ; Sutherland, 1947 ; Thomas, 2016 ). As such, the theories expect a much different pathway through which specialization (akin to social learning theory) and versatility (akin to either learning or self-control theory) form.

Although friendships are theoretically intertwined into the larger specialization and versatility issue, researchers have had considerable difficulty in developing a knowledge base that recognizes friendships as central to specialization and versatility. Despite this, we do know from studies on specialization and versality that most people do not specialize in their patterns of deviance (see Farrington, 2003 ; Jennings, Zgoba, Donner, Henderson, & Tewksbury, 2014 ; Mazerolle, Brame, Paternoster, Piquero, & Dean, 2000 ; Piquero, 2000 ; Piquero, Farrington, & Blumstein, 2003 ; Wright, Pratt, & DeLisi, 2008 ; also see Armstrong, 2008 ; Ha & Andresen, 2017 ; Harris, Smallbone, Dennison, & Knight, 2009 ; McGloin, Sullivan, Piquero, & Pratt, 2007 ; Sullivan, McGloin, Pratt, & Piquero, 2006 ). Although this might seem to support self-control on first glance due to the theory’s adamant stance against specialization, this relatively consistent finding could in fact support either the control or learning perspective when viewed from the perspective of friendships. Further developing a theoretical clarity and understanding of the relationship between specialization, versatility, and peer characteristics is the broad goal of this study. Using data from a large study of people nested within friendship pairs (or friendship ‘dyads’), we apply the primary tenets of self-control theory and social learning theory to versatility and specialization in offending among friends. Before discussing the specifics, however, we begin by reviewing each theory’s approach to explaining offending specialization and versatility and discussing research relevant to the competing theories’ expectations.

Self-Control, Specialization, and Versatility

As a general theory of crime, self-control theory posits that the root cause of deviance is an individual’s level of self-control. Developed in early childhood through effective parental punishment ( Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990 ), self-control refers to the ability to restrain one’s behavior. Individuals with low self-control tend to be impulsive, insensitive, risk-taking, and tend to not consider the long-term consequences of their behavior. Gottfredson and Hirschi contend that self-control is not specific to any particular set of offending behaviors and, instead, the theory purports to explain “all crimes, at all times” (p. 117). While research on the efficacy of self-control in explaining all types of crime is mixed (e.g., LaGrange & Silverman, 1999 ; however, see DeLisi, Hochstetler, Higgins, Beaver, & Graeve, 2008 ), studies tend to support the notion that those with low self-control offend more than those with greater levels of self-control (e.g., DeLisi, 2001 ). Highlighting this stance, Pratt and Cullen’s (2000) meta-analysis on the general theory of crime concludes that “self-control [is] one of the strongest known correlates of crime” (p. 952; see also Vazsonyi et al., 2017 for a more recent meta-analysis).

Applying this argument to versatility in offending, self-control theory would posit that low self-control – as the root cause of all deviant and antisocial behaviors – should be predictive of a significant degree of variation in offending. This is due in part to the fact that most crime is highly opportunistic and requires little in the way of planning ( Pratt, Barnes, Cullen, & Turanovic, 2016 ). The result is that individuals with low self-control will engage in a variety of offending behaviors with little consistency or stability in the types of crimes they choose to commit. In this vein, Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) hypothesize that low self-control will produce “much versatility among offenders in the criminal acts in which they engage” (p. 91). Summarizing their opinions of offending and specialization, Gottfredson and Hirschi succinctly state that “offenders do not specialize” (p. 94).

Extending this argument into the realm of friendships, Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) are clear that people with low self-control should form friendships with one another. That is, people with low self-control tend to befriend individuals who also have low self-control, thus resulting in peer groups containing deviant members who should all have low self-control. While these friendships should be of poor quality, Gottfredson and Hirschi (p. 234) state that self-control levels should nonetheless cause deviant individuals to “flock together”. Self-control, therefore, is the basis for friendship formation and offending alike. Going one step further, self-control is also the basis for offending versatility. As such, those with low self-control should come together and coalesce into friendships which contain members who are 1) marked by low self-control, 2) are highly deviant, and 3) highly versatile in their offending patterns. Accordingly, levels of self-control among friends should be related to, and consequential for, versatility in offending among members of a friendship.

Extant research on self-control and friendship formation has, to an extent, explored Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (1990) expectations about friendships and self-control. While two studies suggest that self-control is not attributing to friendship selection preferences ( Boman, 2017 ; Young, 2011 ), other studies find that selection processes are important and may be linked to self-control ( Baron, 2003 ; Chapple, 2005 ; McGloin & Shermer, 2009 ; Simons, Wu, Conger, & Lorenz, 1994 ). However, the natural complexity of studying friendships has limited the ability of such research to examine how versatility in offending varies across friends’ levels of self-control. Despite this, research does demonstrate that individuals who choose to offend tend not to specialize (e.g., Brame, Bushway, Paternoster, & Apel, 2004 ; see also DeLisi, 2005 ). As Pratt et al. (2016) assert, “The reality is that offenders are not all that picky when it comes to their misbehavior” (p. 838). Supporting this notion, low self-control is related to numerous, versatile antisocial outcomes and offenses (e.g., see Hirtenlehner & Kunz, 2017 ). In exploring the relationship between self-control and versatility in deviance, Pratt et al. (2016) found that individuals with low self-control are likely to experience instability in employment, be held back in school, and drop out of school. They also are much more likely than those with high self-control to report experiencing problems with alcohol dependency. Other research exploring versatility and self-control has established important linkages between self-control and being involved in accidents ( Junger & Tremblay, 1999 ), academic cheating ( Bolin, 2004 ), binge eating ( Tangney, Baumeister, & Boone, 2004 ), victimization ( Schreck, 1999 ; Turanovic & Pratt, 2014 ), alcohol-induced sexual assault ( Franklin, 2011 ), and bullying ( Unnever & Cornell, 2003 ). Research has even tied low self-control to ‘drunk dialing’ and the use of profanity in public ( Reisig & Pratt, 2011 ). In short, research using self-control theory demonstrates that “offending is versatile instead of specialized” ( Farrington, 2003 , p. 223; cf. Higgins & Makin, 2004 ).

Social Learning, Specialization, and Versatility

Rooted in Sutherland’s (1947) theory of differential association, Akers’ (e.g., 2009) social learning theory posits that deviance is learned through interactions with one’s differential associates. In these interactions, people develop definitions that are either favorable or unfavorable to crime, and crime occurs when the collective weight of definitions favorable to crime exceeds the weight of definitions unfavorable to crime. Overall, research strongly supports the notion that differential association and social learning explain crime in the manner purported by Sutherland (1947) and Burgess and Akers (1966 ; see Pratt et al., 2010 ).

Applying this argument to versatility in offending, learning perspectives immediately point to a critical factor to the development of definitions – one’s differential associates. Through interactions with differential associates, people learn and model the behavior of those with whom they share meaningful relationships. In the case where a person has meaningful ties to those who are specialized on one type of deviance, one’s definitions are likely to become favorable for that one type of behavior. As such, the theory in this case would expect specialization as there is little reason to believe that this person would be versatile in their offending patterns. On the other hand, if one has meaningful ties to others who commit a wide variety of offenses, then the person will probably be versatile in their offending patterns. The implication, then, is that social learning theory’s element of differential association provides the context through which to understand how social learning theory may explain both versatility and specialization in offending.

The literature on social learning theory and specialization/versatility is surprisingly underdeveloped. Summarizing the lack of research on the topic, Thomas (2016) recently, and correctly, stated that “little is known about the role peers play in promoting offending versatility” (26). Of the research that does exist, we know that peers who are isolated tend to offend less on the whole ( Demuth, 2004 ) and in more specialized patterns ( Thomas, 2016 ), although a small portion of isolates offend extensively and in versatile patterns ( Kreager, 2004 ). For the most part, these findings play into the notion that those with friends tend to offend in versatile ways. Warr (1996 ; also 2002 , pp. 38–39) has also noted that group-level behavior tends to be more specialized than individual-level behavior. That is, offending patterns of people are diverse even though some groups only tend to engage in certain types of behaviors. This premise has received empirical support in the research. Studying egocentric networks (‘send’ networks), McGloin and Piquero (2010) found a strong positive relationship between the extent to which people are integrated into their social networks and specialization at the group, but not individual, level.

Some research also highlights that social learning approaches are consistent when people do learn specialized behaviors, such as in the case of sexual offending against adolescents ( Felson & Lane, 2009 ) and, to a lesser extent, stalking ( Fox, Nobles, & Akers, 2011 ). As such, learning theories have been found to explain both offending versatility and specialization. Since social learning is theoretically equipped to explain both behaviors, the theoretical tenets of the theory appear to be supported. Despite this, there is a need for further research on the topic in the context of friendships. This observation raises attention to the goals of the current study.

Current Study

Using a large dataset consisting of individuals nested within friendship pairs, the current study has three primary research questions. First, drawing on social learning (e.g., Akers, 2009 ) and self-control (e.g., Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990 ) theories, is versatility in offending more related to a peer’s offending versatility or levels of self-control among members of friendships? Second, does the method of measurement of peer offending versatility change the understanding of the strength of social learning measures on versatility in offending? Specifically, we interchange an indirect, perceptual measure of peer versatility with a measure of self-reported versatility directly from the friend him/herself. Third, and in a similar mindset, does the means through which self-control is measured – through either an attitudinal or behavioral measure – change the understanding of how self-control relates to versatility in deviance? In lieu of offering hypotheses, we employ an exploratory approach to these theoretically-driven research questions and avoid making specific predictions about the relationships we seek to explore.

The data for this project come from a large sample of persons nested within self-identified friendship pairs (dyads). The data, which consists of 2154 undergraduate college students nested within half as many friendships (1077 dyads), was collected in 2009 at a large university in the southeastern United States. To collect the dyadic sample, the lead investigator contacted faculty teaching the 50 highest enrollment classes offered by the university. The instructors were asked whether they would be interested in providing extra credit to students for the completion of a survey that involved dyads. Two dozen instructors said that they would compensate their students with varying amounts of extra credit for participation in the study.

The chief investigator then prepared documentation for each course’s website and made in-class visits to notify potential participants about the opportunity. Respondents were asked to come to a university building where the study was headquartered during set operating hours. Instead of coming to the study alone, however, they were asked to attend with one of their five best friends in undergraduate studies. The procedure of asking for one of the respondent’s five best friends, which drew from precedent developed by the Add Health data (e.g., Haynie, 2002 ; Haynie & Osgood, 2005 ) and the NSCR’s (e.g., Weerman & Smeek, 2005 ) and Kandel’s (e.g., 1978 ) friendship selection procedures, was designed to attract very close friends (i.e., ‘best’ friends) as well as more ‘regular’ friends. Capturing both ‘best’ and ‘regular’ friends aligns with prior research which finds that best friends may exert a stronger behavioral influence on persons than regular friends ( Weerman & Smeek, 2005 ). Upon arrival to the study’s headquarters, dyad members provided informed consent and were then sent to different locations to complete the study.

Once separated, members of the research team provided the friends with identical paper surveys that were pre-coded with a matching dyadic identification number to link them as being members of one dyad. Each survey contained questions about the respondent, the friend, and the friendship. Research team members monitored respondents during survey administration and were instructed to eliminate any potential avenue for communication (e.g., texting) between the friends during the time the survey was being taken. Following completion of the surveys, each dyad member was individually debriefed and exited the study’s headquarters via separate exits.

Many classes in the project were very large, with several classes carrying enrollments of hundreds of students. Although the 24 classes combined to a total enrollment of 5000 persons, the sampling frame’s size cannot be calculated since it is unknown how many of each respondent’s five friends he/she would have considered bringing to the project. Due to the very large number of potential respondents, about one in five ‘friends’ also received extra credit from a selected course. No significant differences were identified between those who did and did not receive extra credit. Despite all demographic characteristics closely matching the target population, females (66% of the sample; 59% of the population) were slightly overrepresented in the sample. The sample is comprised of 1152 women nested within female-only dyads, 444 men nested within male-only dyads, and 558 people nested within split gender dyads. All dyads are independent, meaning that no person was nested within more than one friendship pair. All procedures were approved by the institution’s review board.

Dataset Structure

In the criminological context, dyadic data are unique because models can be estimated that explore how the characteristics of two individual people relate to the target respondent’s behavior. The current project uses a double-entry file (see Kenny, Kashy, & Cook, 2006 ), a type of datafile structure common in dyadic data analysis, to maximize the inferences which can be made. In the double-entry file, the units of analysis are individuals nested within dyads ( n = 2154 persons within 1077 friendships). This creates a situation where each person in the dyad has his/her own line of data and serves as the focal person of interest (called the ‘actor’) whose behavior may be dependent on characteristics of him/herself and another person (the ‘friend’). Stated differently, Person A is the actor who has Person B as a friend, and, inversely, Person B is the actor who has Person A as a friend. For more information on this file structure, see Kenny et al.’ (2006) and Campbell and Kashy’s (2002) work.

Dependent Variable

Self-reported versatility in offending.

The outcome variable in this project, which is designed to capture the extent of versatility in an acto’s offending, required several steps to construct. The data contained 20 different self-reported deviance items that asked the actor about crime over the past twelve months. Each question was worded, “In the past 12 months, how often have you item ” and was measured on the National Youth Survey’s metric of 0 (“never”) to 8 (“two to three times a day”; see Elliott, Huizinga, & Ageton, 1985 ). These 20 self-reported items load onto five distinct constructs of behavior – theft (4 items), vandalism (4 items), violence (4 items), alcohol use and related behaviors (4 items), and drug use and related behaviors (4 items). Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) showing evidence of very close fit (all Confirmatory Fit Indices [CFIs] ≥ .95, Tucker-Lewis Indices [TLIs] ≥ .95, and root mean square errors of approximation [RMSEAs] ≤ .06) confirmed the five-factor solution (unreported).

To construct the measure of self-reported versatility, each item was first collapsed into a binary measure where the actor either indicated that he/she engaged in the behavior or refrained from the behavior altogether (0 = did not commit; 1 = committed). Second, each binary item was then summed into a variety index for each construct of behavior, making the range of all five constructs ‘0’ to ‘4’ since each behavioral construct carries four items. Third, this project’s main goal lies in investigating the relationship between versatility in offending and theoretical predictors. This issue more closely adheres to the commission of a wide range of behaviors rather than the frequency of such behaviors. As such, each construct’s variety index was collapsed into a binary measure where a score of ‘1’ indicates the actor committed a deviant act within the purview of each behavioral construct (a score of ‘0’ means the actor did not engage in that construct of deviance whatsoever). Fourth, and finally, the binary measures of construct-specific deviance were summed into the dependent variable, self-reported offending versatility . This variety index has a range of ‘0’ – indicating that the actor’s behavior was totally non-versatile since he/she committed no deviance whatsoever – to ‘5,’ which indicates the actor’s behavior was extremely versatile since he/she engaged in all five constructs of behavior. Higher scores represent a greater offending versatility. Since the mean of this item (M = 1.834) is greater than one, the average person was at least somewhat versatile in their patterns of deviance (see Table 1 for descriptive statistics).

Summary characteristics of the dyadic sample ( N = 2154 people nested within 1077 friendships)

Descriptive characteristics for the actor and friend are identical due to the structure and nesting within the data

Independent Variables

Perceptual peer versatility in offending.

The actor’s perception of the versatility of the friend’s offending serves as the first independent variable. Created to be conceptually similar to the dependent variable, 20 questions asked the actor “In the past 12 months, how often has the friend you attended this study with item ?” The behaviors are the same as those in the dependent variable. Measured again on the NYS metric of ‘0’ (never) to ‘8’ (two to three times a day), these items also load on a 5-factor structure where each construct (theft, vandalism, violence, alcohol use and related behaviors, and drug use and related behaviors) has four items and shows evidence of close fit (unreported CFA fit statistics: all CFIs and TLIs ≥ .95, all RMSEAs ≤ .06).

To create this independent variable, the 20 base perceptual items were collapsed into binary measures indicating whether the actor thought his/her friend engaged in the behavior (scored ‘1’) or did not engage in the behavior (‘0’). These items were summed together for each construct and re-dichotomized to indicate whether the respondent thought his/her friend engaged in any deviance within the respective construct (scored ‘1’) or refrained entirely from deviance within the construct (‘0’). Finally, the binary items for each construct were summed to capture perceptual peer versatility in offending . This measure captures the number of constructs of deviance which the actor thought his/her friend had engaged in over the past year (M = 1.363, SD = 1.250, range 0–5). Higher scores represent greater versatility.

Self-Reported Peer Versatility in Offending

Due to the way the study was designed and the double-entry datafile structure, we are capable of providing an alternative measure of peer versatility that relies on reports directly from the peer him/herself. In addition to the authors of self-control theory disliking perceptual measures of offending (e.g., Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990 ), research demonstrates that measures of perceptual peer offending (termed ‘indirect’ peer deviance) operate differently in multivariate models than measures of self-reported offending gathered directly from peers themselves (called ‘direct’ peer deviance; see Meldrum, Young, & Weerman, 2009 ).

Accordingly, we include a measure of direct peer deviance that captures self-reported peer versatility in offending . Although the measure captures the versatility of the friend’s offending, it is constructed in an identical manner to the dependent variable. Due to the double-entry data structure, this measure has the same descriptive statistics as the outcome measure (see Kenny et al., 2006 ), although its nesting in the dataset makes it a unique variable (also see Campbell & Kashy, 2002 ).

Attitudinal Self-Control

Two measures of self-control are used in this project. The first, attitudinal self-control , is captured through the frequently-used scale developed by Grasmick, Tittle, Bursik, and Arneklev (1993) . This measure, which contains 24 items, captures the six subdimensions of self-control–impulsivity, a preference for simple tasks, a preference for physical activities, risk-seeking, self-centeredness, and temper – which were defined by Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) . This average-item-score scale, which fits the data consistently (Cronbach’s α =.84), is coded so that higher scores measure higher self-control levels (M = 2.878, SD = 0.350, range 1–4). The actor’s and the friend’s attitudinal self-control levels are both utilized as independent variables in the forthcoming analysis.

Behavioral Self-Control

Behavioral measures of self-control are preferred by self-control theory’s original authors (see Hirschi & Gottfredson, 1993 ). To capture behavioral self-control , we use the reduced version of the Retrospective Behavioral Self-Control Scale (the ‘RBS’; see Marcus, 2003 ). The original RBS contained 67 items which inquired about behaviors relevant to self-control during the age ranges of 8–13, 14–18, and 19–25 years of age. The items are measured on a scale of 1, indicating the respondent ‘never’ behaved in that manner, to ‘7,’ indicating that he/she ‘always’ behaved that way.

Despite having the advantage that the scale asks about behaviors rather than attitudes, many of the original items on the RBS were tautological because they directly asked about crime. Using item-response modeling in conjunction with face validity tests, Ward, Gibson, Boman, and Leite (2010) reduced the 67 item RBS to 18 items that showed both face and internal validity. Ward and colleagues’ items were used to construct an average-item-response scale – the RBS reduced version (RBS-r) – in this study. The RBS-r is coded so that higher scores capture higher self-control (M = 5.596, SD = 0.687, range 0–7). The items scale consistently ( α = .82), and actor and friend measures of the RBS-r are used as independent variables in forthcoming analyses. The wording of the items can be seen in Appendix Table 4 .

Models are estimated with demographic controls of the actor and the friend. First, we control for the sex (1 = male [33.6% of the sample]; 0 = female) of the actor and the friend. Second, we control for the race of the actor and friend, which is defined as a dichotomy that compares those who are non-white (coded ‘1’; 36.9% non-white) to those who are white (coded ‘0’). Third, we include a standalone measure of whether the respondent identified as being of Hispanic ethnicity (1 = Hispanic [18.6% of the sample]; 0 = non-Hispanic). Fourth, and finally, we include a measure of the age of the actor and the friend, measured as a count (M = 19.339, SD = 1.433).

Analytical Strategy

With naturally nested data, a multilevel analysis is necessary. Accordingly, this study employs the use of two-level, mixed-effects hierarchical linear models. These models fall under the classification of actor-partner interdependence models, a type of analysis specifically designed for dyadic data (see Kenny et al., 2006 ). In this case, a mixed model is necessary because there is variation both within dyads (friends are different from each other) and between dyads (friendships are different from each other). The level 1 equation will include characteristics of the actor and the partner and is the focal level of interest in this study. Level 2 in the forthcoming models is called a ‘grouping’ level, as it simply groups the level 1 equation around the dyadic friendship identification variable.

Very minor amounts of missing data (less than 1% missing on all variables) were imputed using a Markov-chain Monte Carlo imputation technique (20 draws from 200 burn-in iterations). Models using listwise deletion (not reported) showed similar results. All models were estimated with Stata version 14.2.

Primary Findings: Social Learning, Self-Control, and Versatility

Results relevant to the first research question are presented in a series of mixed models in Table 2 . Model 1 regresses the actor’s versatility in offending onto actor measures of perceptual peer versatility, attitudinal self-control ( Grasmick et al., 1993 ), and controls. The actor’s perception of the peer’s versatility is positive and highly significant (b = .511, SE = .021, p ≤ .001), indicating that actors who perceive their peers are more diverse in offending are more diverse themselves. Additionally, the actor’s attitudinal self-control is negative and also significant (b = −.043, SE = .003, p ≤ .001), suggesting that those who have lower levels of attitudinal self-control tend to have a higher versatility in offending. Although most controls do not approach levels of statistical significance, males (b = .337, SE = .054, p ≤ .001) report significantly more offending versatility than women.

Mixed models regressing the actor’s offending versatility onto characteristics of the actor and the friend (attitudinal self-control results; N = 2154)

Model 2 of Table 2 adds friend measures to the level 1 equation. However, no friend measures reach statistical significance, and the overall patterns of significance in the actor effects from Model 1 remain unchanged. However, results do change in Model 3 of Table 2 , which removes the peer effects but adds a measure of self-reported peer versatility captured directly from the peer’s self-reports. This measure reaches high levels of statistical significance (b = .192, SE = .020, p ≤ .001), and the direction indicates that those who have friends who self-report high levels of versatility in their offending are versatile themselves. However, the coefficient strength of the perceptual measure in Model 2 (b = .514) is much stronger than the coefficient in Model 3 (b = .192) with approximately the same standard error, suggesting that the perceptual measure of peer versatility is more impactful than the peer’s self-report. Finally, white (b = −.206, SE = .059, p ≤ .001) male (b = .425, SE = .060, p ≤ .001) actors report significantly higher versatility in offending than non-whites and females, respectively.

The final model in Table 2 , Model 4, once again adds in the friend effects to examine their relationship on the direct measure of versatility in peer offending. Namely, while attitudinal actor self-control is still significant (b = −.056, SE = .004, p ≤ .001), the peer’s level of self-control is unrelated to the actor’s versatility in offending. Besides the peer’s self-reported offending versatility (b = .186, SE = .022, p ≤ .001), no other peer measures reach significance and the actor effects are similar to those in Model 3.

Table 3 presents a similar set of mixed models as reported in Table 2 , but instead removes the attitudinal measure of actor and friend self-control and replaces it with the behavioral measure (the RBS-r). InModel1 of Table 3 , the actor’s perception of the peer’s versatility is significant and positively related to the actor’s offending versatility (b = .519, SE = .021, p ≤ .001). The actor’s behavioral level of self-control is negative and highly significant (b = −.456, SE = .043, p ≤ .001), suggesting that actors with lower behavioral self-control are much more likely to be versatile in their offending. Additionally, males (b = .398, SE = .054, p ≤ .001) and those of Hispanic descent (b = .133, SE = .065, p ≤ .05) are more likely to be versatile. Non-whites (b = −.121, SE = .053, p ≤ .05) and younger (b = −.049, SE = .018, p ≤ .01) actors are less likely to demonstrate versatility.

Mixed models regressing the actor’s offending versatility onto characteristics of the actor and the friend (behavioral self-control results; N = 2154)

Peer measures are added into Model 2 of Table 3 . No peer measures are significantly related to the actor’s versatility in offending, including the peer’s behavioral self-control. However, the inclusion of these measures does reduce the actor’s race and ethnicity to levels of non-significance, although the actor’s perception of the peer’s versatility (b = .518, SE = .022, p ≤ .001) and behavioral self-control levels (b = −.457, SE = .043, p ≤ .001) remain significant at nearly identical levels as in Model 1.

When the actor’s perception of the peer’s versatility is removed and replaced by the peer’s self-reported offending versatility ( Table 3 ‘s third model), the direct measure reaches high levels of statistical significance (b = .200, SE = .020, p ≤ .001) in a positive direction with the actor’s self-reported versatility. The actor’s behavioral self-control coefficient (b = −.623) also increases substantially in magnitude over the prior model (b = −.457). Finally, when peer covariates are added back into the model (Model 4, Table 3 ), the coefficient of direct peer versatility (b = .184) decreases slightly, but maintains high levels of statistical significance. Additionally, lower levels of the actor’s behavioral self-control (b = −.626, SE = .047, p ≤ .001) remain strongly related to versatility in offending. Male (b = .487, SE = .066) and Hispanic actors (b = .161, SE = .07, p ≤ .05) are more likely to offend in a versatile manner, whereas non-white (b = −.179, SE = .068, p ≤ .01) actors and those with non-white friends (b = −.168, SE = .067, p ≤ .05) are less likely to offend in a versatile manner.

Discussion and Conclusions

Drawing from social learning and self-control theories and using data from a large sample of people nested within friendship pairs, this study explored the relationships between specialization and versatility in offending among friendships. Results from a series of multilevel models demonstrated that versatility in offending is related to the actor’s self-control as well as the actor’s perception of his/her friend’s versatility. When friend effects were entered into the equations, the peer’s self-reported versatility also positively related to the actor’s versatility, although the peer’s self-control did not. This same basic pattern of significant findings was observed when the commonly used attitudinal measure of self-control developed by Grasmick et al. (1993) was interchanged with a behavioral measure of self-control developed by Marcus (2003) and refined by Ward et al. (2010) . Despite the similarities in the significance patterns, the actor’s attitudinal self-control had a substantially weaker relationship with offending versatility than the actor’s behavioral self-control. In this section, we discuss the implications of our findings for social learning, self-control, and the broader context of offending specialization and versatility in the context of friendships.

Results from this study carry important implications for self-control theory. While findings demonstrated that the actor’s self-control related to offending versatility as self-control theory would clearly expect ( Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990 ), the friend’s level of self-control was not significantly associated with the actor’s versatility in offending. There are two ways this can be interpreted. First, the lack of a significant peer effect supports self-control theory because self-control is an intra-individual trait that should seemingly be uninfluenced by external forces. Accordingly, any peer effect should be either inconsequential, spurious, or an artifact of measurement error. As a consequence, the peer’s self-control should not have an effect on actor’s behavior – a theoretical tenet which our results strongly support.

A second interpretation of these results is also possible. The lack of a significant peer self-control effect on the actor’s offending versatility is, in a way, paradoxical. Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) clearly outline that individuals with low self-control will form friendships with others who also have low self-control. Due to self-control causing a dual process of both friendship formation and offending versatility, the friend’s self-control should be related to characteristics of the actor’s offending because of a strong correlation that should exist between the friends’ levels of self-control. From this point of view, it is theoretically counterintuitive to expect that peer self-control – which should be virtually identical to the actor’s self-control – to be unrelated to offending. Accordingly, the results regarding peer self-control from the first perspective support self-control theory. However, from the second perspective, support is not provided to the theory. It appears that self-control theory’s hypotheses regarding peer effects compete with one another. Stated differently, the theory appears to contradict itself in regard to the meaning of peer influence.

Interestingly, Gottfredson and Hirschi do offer a potential explanation for the peer effect that is based in the concept of opportunity. According to Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990 , p. 92), any specialized offending that occurs among individuals with low-self-control is “determined by convenience and opportunity.” It could be the case that individuals within friendships do have similar levels of self-control but experience varying levels of opportunity to commit crime and/or specialize in it. Indeed, the variation in opportunity among friends (see Osgood & Anderson, 2004 ) could very well explain the lack of a relationship between friend self-control and the actor’s level of offending versatility – a point which future research should explore. The opportunity construct will be imperative to resolving the contradictory expectations from Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (1990) theory regarding how the peer’s self-control should relate to an actor’s behavior.

Following prior literature (e.g., Boman, 2017 ; Evans, Cullen, Burton, Dunaway, & Benson, 1997 ), we included a measure of attitudinal self-control derived from Grasmick et al.’ (1993) work as well as a behavioral measure (from Marcus, 2003 and Ward et al., 2010 ; see Appendix Table 4 for more information). Despite similarity in the overall (in)significance patterns of the peer self-control effect for both the attitudinal and behavioral measures, there were differences for the actor’s self-control that were measurement dependent. While both the attitudinal and behavioral measures were significant, the coefficients of the actor’s behavioral self-control were much stronger than the coefficients of attitudinal self-control. As such, our findings demonstrate empirical support to Hirschi and Gottfredson’s (1993) preference for behavioral measures of self-control while also highlighting the utility of different operationalizations of the general theory’s primary construct.

In addition to carrying new and unique findings for how self-control relates to versatility in deviance, our results also carry implications for Burgess and Akers’ (1966 ; also Akers, 2009 ) theory of social learning. Results across all models clearly demonstrated that the construct of differential association is of importance in relation to offending versatility. Specifically, models using a perceptual measure of the versatility of the peer’s offending demonstrated that the differential association-informed construct was positive in direction and highly statistically significant. As such, the models suggest that actors tend to offend in more versatile ways when they think their peers are also versatile and, inversely, that actors tend to be more specialized when they believe their friends to be highly specialized. When the measure of differential association was changed from a perception of the peer’s deviance to the peer’s self-reported deviance, the results were largely the same: The measure was significantly related to offending versatility and positive in direction. Regardless of how the versatility construct is operationalized, differential association and social learning theories are supported (see, generally, Boman, Stogner, Miller, Griffin, & Krohn, 2012 ; Meldrum & Boman, 2013 ; Young, Rebellon, Barnes, & Weerman, 2014 ).

Overall, findings from the perceptual peer and peer’s self-reported versatility measures demonstrate a considerable amount of support for social learning and differential association theories. Despite the measurement technique, the measure of differential association related strongly to the actor’s offending versatility. While social learning theory ( Akers, 2009 ) would expect the perceptual measure of peer versatility to be the most meaningful on the outcome, the theory would also hypothesize that the peer’s self-reported versatility would be influential as well ( Akers, 2009 , pp. 117–120). Differences in the coefficient sizes between the two measurement methods could easily be interpreted as being supportive of this very specific hypothesis from Akers. As such, social learning theory has received strong support as differential association relates to offending versatility regardless of how the construct is measured.

As research on social learning and specialization and versatility moves into the future, an important avenue of inquiry may lie in recognizing that some behaviors are more ‘groupy’ than others. That is, some behaviors are more likely to be committed in groups than other types of behavior. The term ‘groupy’ was developed by Warr (2002) and has become used in conjunction with the related term of ‘non-groupy’ (see Boman & Gibson, 2016 ) that completes Warr’s taxonomy. Examples of groupy behavior include vandalism, substance use, and status crimes. On the other hand, examples of non-groupy behavior include theft, certain types of serious assault, and sexual battery (see Warr, 2002 ). Research on the groupy and non-groupy issue has proven to be imperative in other contexts in criminology (e.g., Boman & Gibson, 2016 ; Boman & Mowen, 2018 ; also see Beaver et al., 2011 for a related study), and there is ample reason to believe that the same issue may also be of importance in the specialization and versatility context. The groupy/non-groupy taxonomy may also help research segue into the notion of friendship-level specialization, an important theoretical and policy-based issue that – unfortunately – has remained largely unexplored by criminologists to date (for the exceptions, see McGloin & Piquero, 2010 ; Thomas, 2016 ; Warr, 1996 ). There are also measurement issues surrounding perceptual peer specialization and versatility that are immediately relevant to the difference in the coefficient magnitude between the perceptual and direct peer specialization measures. Similar in concept to issues surrounding peer deviance, there has been no literature to date investigating how peer specialization could be or should be measured. This literature would be very useful, and it could incorporate Warr’s groupy and non-groupy taxonomy to determine how the nature of specialization impacts our understanding of specialization and versatility in general and in a friendship context specifically.

Despite some valuable findings and necessary future directions regarding how social learning and self-control relate to specialization and versatility in offending among friends, the current study has some notable limitations. First and foremost, the current data come from a cross-section of students attending only one American university. Not only does this limit our ability to determine causal order between our key variables of interest, our findings are likely to be of limited generalizability to those in other populations. An overrepresentation of females may also have limited the variance in our dependent variables. Second, while a strength of the current study is the dyadic design, dyads are an inherently limited unit of analysis. People typically have several friends, meaning they are nested within multiple dyads. Unfortunately, our data contain only one of a person’s potentially many dyadic friendships. A similar analysis using social network data would be valuable as it would build upon recent work by Thomas (2016) and McGloin and Piquero (2010) . Such a study should seek to explore other methods of capturing specialization, including the methods developed by Osgood and Schreck (2007) as well as the method by DeLisi et al. (2011) . Third, our outcome and key predictor measures are constructed from only twenty items spanning five types of offending. We highlight that there are different types of control ( DeLisi & Vaughn, 2014 ) and many more types of offenses, meaning the variability in these measures is limited. Although our study has some limitations, the findings nonetheless further develop the state of knowledge as to how offending versatility relates to constructs derived from two of our field’s most prominent theories.

Findings from this study offer strong support to both self-control ( Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990 ) and social learning ( Akers, 2009 ) perspectives’ expectations on offending specialization and versatility. However, what is most apparent is the many future directions of necessary exploration to which findings from this study raise attention. Future research should seek to explore how self-control and opportunity ( Osgood & Anderson, 2004 ) interact for versatility in the friendship context. Future research on this topic also has the ability to remediate a notable inconsistency regarding how peer effects should operate within the context of self-control theory. This study highlights that the lack of a peer effect supports the theory. But, at the same time, low self-control theoretically causes friendships to form while also causing both offending and versatility in offending, forming a strange paradox in how Gottfredson and Hirschi view friends and friendships. Additionally, certain behaviors are more (or less) likely to be committed in groups than others ( Warr, 2002 ), and the notion of friendship-level specialization is emphasized (see McGloin & Piquero, 2010 ; Warr, 1996 ; 2002 ). Perhaps people engage in specialized behaviors when around only certain friends – that is, a person may only consume alcohol with one friend, and may only use opioids with another friend (see Warr, 2002 , p. 38). If this were the case, then offending may appear versatile overall (e.g., Farrington, 2003 ) even though friendship-level contexts may carry overlooked, but nonetheless important, patterns of specialization. If this were true, the current understanding that people ‘do not specialize’ in offending may be incorrect at worst or misleading at best. Either way, the notion of friendship-level specialization must take precedence in the research on specialization and versatility due to the established importance of peers and the applicability of friendship-level events to many different types of theory.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported in part by the Center for Family and Demographic Research, Bowling Green State University, which has core funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2CHD050959).

John Boman is an Assistant Professor at Bowling Green State University in the Department of Sociology. His research focuses on the roles of interpersonal influences, and particularly peers and friends, on crime, deviance, and substance use over the life-course. His recent work appears in Criminology , the Journal of Criminal Justice , and the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

Thomas J. Mowen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Bowling Green State University. His research broadly examines the consequences of school security and punishment as well as the process of prison reentry. His recent research has appeared in Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, and Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency.

George E. Higgins is Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Louisville. He received his Ph.D. in Criminology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2001. His most recent publications appear or are forthcoming in Journal of Criminal Justice, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Justice Quarterly, Deviant Behavior, and Youth and Society.

Wording of items in the behavioral self-control RBS-r scale

All items measured on a scale of 1–7 (1 = never; 2 = once; 3 = two or three times; 4 = fairly many times; 5 = often; 6 = very often; 7 = always) . For more information, see Marcus (2003) and Ward et al. (2010)

• Akers RL (2009). Social Learning and Social Structure: A General Theory of Crime and Deviance . New Brunswick: Transaction. [ Google Scholar ]
• Armstrong TA (2008). Are trends in specialization across arrests explained by changes in specialization occurring with age? Justice Quarterly , 25 , 201–222. [ Google Scholar ]
• Baron SW (2003). Self-control, social consequences, and criminal behavior: Street youth and the general theory of crime . Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency , 40 , 403–425. [ Google Scholar ]
• Beaver KM, Gibson CL, Turner MG, DeLisi M, Vaughn MG, & Holand A. (2011). The stability of delinquent peer associations: A biosocial test of Warr’s sticky friends hypothesis . Crime & Delinquency , 57 , 907–927. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bolin AU (2004). Self-control, perceived opportunity, and attitudes as predictors of academic dishonesty . The Journal of Psychology , 138 , 101–114. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Boman JH IV. (2017). Do birds of a feather really flock together? Friendships, self-control similarity, and deviant behavior . British Journal of Criminology , 57 , 1208–1229. [ Google Scholar ]
• Boman JH IV., & Gibson CL (2016). The implications of using group-based offenses versus non-group-based offenses in peer deviance scales . Deviant Behavior , 37 , 1411–1428. [ Google Scholar ]
• Boman JH IV., & Mowen TJ (2018). Same feathers, different flocks. Breaking down the meaning of ‘behavioral homophily’ in the etiology of crime . Journal of Criminal Justice , 54 , 30–40. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Boman JH IV., Stogner JM, Miller BL, Griffin OG III, & Krohn MD (2012). On the operational validity of perceptual peer delinquency: Exploring projection and elements contained in perceptions . Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency , 49 , 601–621. [ Google Scholar ]
• Brame R, Bushway SD, Paternoster R, & Apel R. (2004). Assessing the effect of adolescent employment on involvement in criminal activity . Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice , 20 , 236–256. [ Google Scholar ]
• Burgess RL, & Akers RL (1966). A differential association-reinforcement theory of criminal behavior . Social Problems , 14 , 128–147. [ Google Scholar ]
• Campbell L, & Kashy DA (2002). Estimating actor, partner, and interaction effects for dyadic data using PROC MIXED and HLM: A user-friendly guide . Personal Relationships , 9 , 372–342. [ Google Scholar ]
• Chapple CL (2005). Self-control, peer relations, and delinquency . Justice Quarterly , 22 , 89–106. [ Google Scholar ]
• DeLisi M. (2001). It’s all in the record: Assessing self-control theory with and offender sample . Criminal Justice Review , 26 , 1–16. [ Google Scholar ]
• DeLisi M. (2005). Career criminals in society . Thousand Oaks: Sage. [ Google Scholar ]
• DeLisi M, Beaver KM, Wright KA, Wright JP, Vaughn MG, & Trulson CT (2011). Criminal specialization revisited: A simultaneous quantile regression approach . American Journal of Criminal Justice , 36 , 73–92. [ Google Scholar ]
• DeLisi M, Hochstetler A, Higgins GE, Beaver KM, & Graeve CM (2008). Toward a general theory of criminal justice: Low self-control and offender noncompliance . Criminal Justice Review , 33 , 141–158. [ Google Scholar ]
• DeLisi M, & Vaughn MG (2014). Foundation for a temperament-based theory of antisocial behavior and criminal justice system involvement . Journal of Criminal Justice , 42 , 10–25. [ Google Scholar ]
• Demuth S. (2004). Understanding the delinquency and social relationships of loners . Youth & Society , 35 , 366–392. [ Google Scholar ]
• Elliott DS, Huizinga D, & Ageton SS (1985). Explaining delinquency and drug use . Beverly Hills: Sage. [ Google Scholar ]
• Evans TD, Cullen FT, Burton VS Jr., Dunaway RG, & Benson ML (1997). The social consequences of self-control: Testing the general theory of crime . Criminology , 35 , 475–504. [ Google Scholar ]
• Farrington DP (2003). Developmental and life-course criminology: Key theoretical and empirical issues – The 2002 Sutherland award address . Criminology , 41 , 221–255. [ Google Scholar ]
• Felson RB, & Lane KJ (2009). Social learning, sexual and physical abuse, and adult crime . Aggressive Behavior , 35 , 489–501. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Fox KA, Nobles MR, & Akers RL (2011). Is stalking learned phenomenon? An empirical test of social learning theory . Journal of Criminal Justice , 39 , 39–47. [ Google Scholar ]
• Franklin C. (2011). An investigation of the relationship between self-control and alcohol-induced sexual assault victimization . Criminal Justice & Behavior , 38 , 263–285. [ Google Scholar ]
• Gottfredson MR, & Hirschi T. (1990). A general theory of crime . Stanford: Stanford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Grasmick HG, Tittle CR, Bursik RJ, & Arneklev BJ (1993). Testing the Core empirical implications of Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime . Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency , 30 , 5–29. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ha OK, & Andresen MA (2017). Unemployment and the specialization of criminal activity: A neighborhood analysis . Journal of Criminal Justice , 48 , 1–8. [ Google Scholar ]
• Harris DA, Smallbone S, Dennison S, & Knight RA (2009). Specialization and versatility in sexual offenders referred for civil commitment . Journal of Criminal Justice , 37 , 37–44. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Haynie DL (2002). Friendship networks and delinquency: The relative nature of peer delinquency . Journal of Quantitative Criminology , 18 , 99–134. [ Google Scholar ]
• Haynie DL, & Osgood DW (2005). Reconsidering peers and delinquency: How do peers matter? Social Forces , 84 , 1109–1130. [ Google Scholar ]
• Higgins GE, & Makin DA (2004). Does social learning theory condition the effects of low self-control on students’ software piracy? Journal of Economic Crime Management , 2 , 1–22. [ Google Scholar ]
• Hirschi T, & Gottfredson MR (1993). Commentary: Testing the general theory of crime . Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency , 30 , 47–54. [ Google Scholar ]
• Hirtenlehner H, & Kunz F. (2017). Can self-control theory explain offending in late adulthood? Evidence from Germany. Journal of Criminal Justice , 48 , 37–47. [ Google Scholar ]
• Jennings WG, Zgoba KM, Donner CM, Henderson BB, & Tewksbury R. (2014). Considering specialization/versatility as an unintended consequence of SORN . Journal of Criminal Justice , 42 , 184–192. [ Google Scholar ]
• Junger M, & Tremblay RE (1999). Self-control, accidents, and crime . Criminal Justice & Behavior , 26 , 485–501. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kandel DB (1978). Similarity in real-life adolescent friendship pairs . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 36 , 306–312. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kenny DA, Kashy DA, & Cook WL (2006). Dyadic Data Analysis . New York: Guilford. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kreager DA (2004). Strangers in the halls: Isolation and delinquency in school networks . Social Forces , 83 , 351–390. [ Google Scholar ]
• LaGrange TC, & Silverman RA (1999). Low self-control and opportunity: Testing the general theory of crime as an explanation for gender differences in delinquency . Criminology , 37 , 41–72. [ Google Scholar ]
• Marcus B. (2003). An empirical examination of the construct validity of two alternative self-control measures . Educational and Psychological Measurement , 63 , 674–706. [ Google Scholar ]
• Mazerolle P, Brame R, Paternoster R, Piquero AR, & Dean C. (2000). Onset age, persistence, and offending versatility: Comparisons across gender . Criminology , 38 , 1143–1172. [ Google Scholar ]
• McGloin JM, & Piquero AR (2010). On the relationship between co-offending network redundancy and offending versatility . Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency , 47 , 63–90. [ Google Scholar ]
• McGloin JM, & Shermer LO (2009). Self-control and deviant peer network structure . Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency , 46 , 35–72. [ Google Scholar ]
• McGloin JM, Sullivan CJ, Piquero AR, & Pratt TC (2007). Local life circumstances and offending specialization/versatility: Comparing opportunity and propensity models . Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency , 44 , 321–346. [ Google Scholar ]
• Meldrum RC, & Boman JH IV. (2013). Similarities and differences between perceptions of peer delinquency, peer self-reported delinquency, and respondent delinquency: An analysis of friendship dyads . Journal of Criminal Justice , 41 , 395–406. [ Google Scholar ]
• Meldrum RC, Young JTN, & Weerman FM (2009). Reconsidering the effect of self-control and delinquent peers: Implications of measurement for theoretical significance . Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency , 46 , 353–376. [ Google Scholar ]
• Osgood DW, & Anderson AL (2004). Unstructured socializing and rates of delinquency . Criminology , 42 , 519–550. [ Google Scholar ]
• Osgood DW, & Schreck CJ (2007). A new method for studying the extent, stability, and predictors of individual specialization in violence . Criminology , 45 , 273–274. [ Google Scholar ]
• Piquero AR (2000). Frequency, specialization, and violence in offending careers . Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency , 37 , 392–418. [ Google Scholar ]
• Piquero AR, Farrington DP, & Blumstein A. (2003). The criminal career paradigm. In Tonry M. (Ed.), Crime and justice (pp. 359–506). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Pratt TC, Barnes JC, Cullen FT, & Turanovic JJ (2016). “I suck at everything”: Crime, arrest, and the generality of failure . Deviant Behavior , 37 , 837–851. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Pratt TC, & Cullen FT (2000). The empirical status of Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime: A meta-analysis . Criminology , 38 , 932–964. [ Google Scholar ]
• Pratt TC, Cullen FT, Sellers CS, Winfree LT, Madensen TD, Daigle LE, Fearn NE, & Gau JM (2010). The empirical status of social learning theory: A meta-analysis . Justice Quarterly , 27 , 765–802. [ Google Scholar ]
• Reisig MD, & Pratt TC (2011). Low self-control and imprudent behavior revisited . Deviant Behavior , 32 , 589–625. [ Google Scholar ]
• Schreck CJ (1999). Criminal victimization and low self-control: An extension and test of a general theory of crime . Justice Quarterly , 16 , 633–654. [ Google Scholar ]
• Simons RL, Wu C, Conger RD, & Lorenz FO (1994). Two routes to delinquency: Differences between early and late starters in the impact of parenting and deviant peers . Criminology , 32 , 247–276. [ Google Scholar ]
• Sullivan CJ, McGloin JM, Pratt TC, & Piquero AR (2006). Rethinking the “norm” of offender generality: Investigating specialization in the short-term . Criminology , 44 , 199–233. [ Google Scholar ]
• Sutherland EH (1947). Principles of criminology . Philadelphia: Lippincott. [ Google Scholar ]
• Tangney JP, Baumeister RF, & Boone AL (2004). High self-control predicts good adjustment, less pathology, better grades, and interpersonal success . Journal of Personality , 72 , 271–324. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Thomas KJ (2016). On the relationship between peer isolation and offending specialization: The role of peers in promoting versatile offending . Crime & Delinquency , 62 , 26–53. [ Google Scholar ]
• Turanovic JJ, & Pratt TC (2014). “Can’t stop, won’t stop”: Self-control, risky lifestyles, and repeat victimization . Journal of Quantitative Criminology , 30 , 29–56. [ Google Scholar ]
• Unnever JD, & Cornell DG (2003). Bullying, self-control, and ADHD . Journal of Interpersonal Violence , 18 , 129–147. [ Google Scholar ]
• Vazsonyi AT, Mikuška J, & Kelley EL (2017). It’s time: A meta-analysis on the self-control deviance link . Journal of Criminal Justice , 48 , 48–63. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ward JT, Gibson CL, Boman J, & Leite WL (2010). Assessing the validity of the retrospective behavioral self-control scale: Is the general theory of crime stronger than the evidence suggests? Criminal Justice and Behavior , 37 , 336–357. [ Google Scholar ]
• Warr M. (1996). Organization and instigation in delinquent groups . Criminology , 34 , 11–37. [ Google Scholar ]
• Warr M. (2002). Companions in crime . New York, NY: Cambridge. [ Google Scholar ]
• Weerman FM, & Smeek WH (2005). Peer similarity in delinquency for different types of friends: A comparison using two measurement methods . Criminology , 43 , 499–524. [ Google Scholar ]
• Wright KA, Pratt TC, & DeLisi M. (2008). Examining offending specialization in a sample of male multiple homicide offenders . Homicide Studies , 12 , 381–398. [ Google Scholar ]
• Young JTN (2011). How do the ‘end up together’? A social network analysis of self-control, homophily, and adolescent relationships . Journal of Quantitative Criminology , 27 , 251–273. [ Google Scholar ]
• Young JTN, Rebellon CJ, Barnes JC, & Weerman FM (2014). Unpacking the black box of peer similarity in deviance: Understanding the mechanisms linking personal behavior, peer behavior, and perceptions . Criminology , 52 , 60–86. [ Google Scholar ]