Control Perspectives, Social Disorganization, and Self-Control Theory

Control perspectives assume value consensus and morality assumptions within a society.
Humans are naturally humanistic and rational.
Travis Hirschi: "We must ask not why people break rules, but why they follow them."
People engage in crime because of their natural desires.
Social control refers to the processes by which conformity to social norms is regulated, encouraged, and enforced.
Conformity may require resources like money and good schools.

Formal control involves compulsion to conform by the state or others with official capacity to enforce codified rules.
Criminalization and punishment serve as coerced conformity.
Fear of arrest can deter harmful behavior.

Focuses on external forces of control and promoting conformity to minimize crime.
Informal indirect controls matter more than formal ones.
Four elements of social bond theory:
- Attachment: Emotional closeness to pro-social others.
- Commitment: Calculation of the cost of law violation for future goals.
- Involvement: Time spent in conventional activities (e.g., church, school).
- Belief: Ideas about the moral validity of the law.
Attachment and commitment are the stakes in conformity; higher stakes reduce antisocial behavior.
Requires resources and access to prosocial models.

Useful for minor crimes but less helpful for serious crimes.
Doesn't adequately address the influence of crime-involved relatives and friends.
Relies on the notion that surrounding factors are taken care of.

Sampson and Laub developed life course criminology to explain the reduction of criminal behavior with age and persistence in chronic offenders.
Examines criminal careers, including age of onset, escalation, severity, persistence, and desistance.
Social control is age-graded, considering how attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief apply to life course patterns.
Bonds in each life stage are influenced by previous stages.
Important for policymaking to understand what caused persistence and increased severity.
Example: A serial murderer's trajectory from youth offenses to violent crimes.
Critics argue that marriage may not cause desistance but rather people predisposed to desist might seek out these changes.
Addresses agency or behavioral choice but struggles with measurement.

Neighborhoods are less effective at controlling crime when residents lack trust and access to essential services.
Foregrounds the need for resources.
Social ecology studies relationships of people to one another and their physical surroundings.
Concentric zone model describes the city as socially distinct regions.

Crime is often prevalent in Zone 2 due to disinvestment and lack of resources.
Crime and community-level social and economic disadvantage vary in tandem.
High crime areas remain high crime areas regardless of race or ethnicity.
Characteristics of high crime areas:
- Concentrated poverty and joblessness.
- Physical dilapidation.
- Residential mobility.
- Ethnic or cultural heterogeneity.
- Social ills, including high levels of disease, alcoholism, family violence, and neglect.
Maintaining poor-performing neighborhoods maintains the divide between haves and have-nots.
Contemporary criminologists describe social disorganization as the inability of local communities to realize common values or solve problems.

Collective efficacy is the ability or inability for communities to come together to advocate on their own behalf.
Community efficacy can lead to informal surveillance, direct intervention, and accessing public resources.
Social capital refers to social relationships that operate as resources.
Ties to institutional gatekeepers, such as the city council, school board, police chiefs, and nonprofits, are especially valuable.
Social disorganization theory analyzes the private, parochial, and public spheres.
- Private: Informal controls fostered by intimate primary groups.
- Parochial: Interpersonal-level networks where neighbors observe and intervene.
- Public: Community access to public goods and services controlled by agencies outside the neighborhood.

Mass incarceration can cause crime due to recidivism and destabilizing neighborhoods.
Removing parents can contribute to juvenile delinquency.
Gentrification occurs when lower-income households are displaced by higher-income residents.
Gentrification can increase or decrease collective efficacy and therefore law-breaking.
Displacement of native residents can create strain and conflict, like calling the police for cultural behaviors.

Pervasive addiction to opioids disproportionately affects rural communities.
Neighborhood characteristics matter, with greater availability of illicit substances and high levels of stress in poorer communities.

Critics question well-defined and mutually agreed-upon neighborhood boundaries.
Criminologists address this by asking residents about their neighborhood perceptions.
Social disorder theory primarily explains street crime and urban crime.
There is an overabundance of theorization on poor communities and people of color.

Goffredson and Hirschi abandoned social bonds in favor of self-control.
Built on classical school assumptions that all people are naturally motivated to engage in self-interest.
Crimes provide immediate gratification, are exciting, require little skill or planning, and often result in pain for the victim.

Analogous behaviors and criminal versatility often go hand in hand.
Examples include excessive drinking, smoking, gambling, and getting into accidents.
Versatility occurs when an individual engages in many different types of crime.
A burglar may also be a drunk driver.