Introduction to
criminology. Social control
Katarzyna Piątkowska, Ph.D.
Department of Criminology and Security Sciences
Faculty of Law, Administration, and Economics University of Wroclaw, Poland Attorney at Law
Broken Windows Theory
-another Zimbardo’s experiment, 1969
• The theory was introduced in a 1982 article by social scientists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling (’Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities’)
• It was further popularized in the 1990s by New York City police commissioner William Bratton and Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whose policing policies were influenced by the theory . The decade saw a significant decline of crime in the city, although some studies argue that this was caused by other factors.
• New York subway
• ’zero tolerance policy’
CONTROL THEORIES
CONTROL THEORIES.
• Most of the theorists have assumed that conformity is normal or natural, and criminality is abnormal. It is then often argued that there is no justification for individuals to break the law unless something abnormal is present.
• The control theories largely attack that central assumption. Their basis is that every individual is born free to break the law.
• It is criminality which is natural, and conformity needs explanation.
• The main question is: why don’t we all break the law?
• Conformity is seen as the result of special circumstances, and criminality is to be expected if these special circumstances break down.
•For example, there is nothing natural about
driving on one side of the road, and yet motorists
do keep to the required side. It is not natural to
buy rather than take food when one sees it, and
yet in our society most people buy rather than
take.
INDIVIDUAL CONTROL
• Gottfredson and Hirschi, A General Theory of Crime (1990, 1993)
• Their focus is on self-control formed by early childhood socialization, particularly in the family, and provides a wide theory of criminality, not dependent of legal definitions.
• Two aspects: 1) the lack of self-control and 2) the opportunity for commiting crimes
• Lack of self-control – character? Self-centred, impulsive, unable to postpone gratification, enjoys risk-taking…
• Less crimes committed by women – it doesn’t mean they have a stronger self- control, simply less opportunities
• Heavy stress on family vs feminists
• General problem with lack of self-control in young age, it can occure later on, but not necessarily in crimes
SOCIOLOGICAL CONTROL
THEORIES
What is socialization? Social control theories
• The proces of learning one’s culture and how to live within it.
• Lifelong proces of inheriting, interpreting and disseminating norms, customs and ideologies.
• Social control theory proposes that people’s relationships, commitments, values, norms, and beliefs encourage them not to break the law.
• If moral codes are internalized and individuals are tied into, and have a stake in their wider community, they will voluntarily limit their propensity to commit deviant acts (crimes).
Travis Hirschi. University of Arizona.
Sociological control theory
• Before he created – together with Gottfredson –the ’individual control theory’, he had been broadly known for his ’sociological control theory’.
• human beings are born with the freedom to break the law and will only be stopped from doing so either by preventing any opportunities arising, which would not be possible, or by controlling their behaviour in some way.
• Law-breaking is natural. How to explain law-abiding behaviour?
Travis Hirschi. University of Arizona.
Sociological control theory
• Unlike Beccaria and Hobbes, Hirsch did not claim that criminality is an expression of free will, only that it occurs and is a normal behaviour
• Control theory does not mean that those who perform criminal activities lack morality – they just exbitit a different morality
• At birth we know nothing, we have to learn about acceptable and unacceptable behaviour.
• The same is with a new member of a group who previously lived in another community.
Travis Hirschi. University of Arizona.
Sociological control theory
• Classical theorists only recognised a fear as the agent of conformity – people could only be deterred if the feared a nasty punishment
• Control theorists recognise both punishments and rewards
• People are not constantly law abiding or permanently law-breaking
Travis Hirschi. University of
Arizona. Sociological control theory
• Law-abiding citizens are seen to have four elements:
1) Attachment – strong social and psychological attachments with other people and institutions in their community.
2) Commitment – the more social investments an individual makes to spouse, children, education, job, financial commitments, property investment etc, the less likely that individual is to risk losing all or some of this by a delinquent act. It is a cost-benefit sort of argument.
3) Involvement – activities that serve to both further bond an individual to others and leave limited tim to become involved in deviant activities.
4) Beliefs – constantly changing.
each of these are given equal weight.
Bob Roshier (1989) gave us 7 control elements:
1) Affection – who doesn’t want affection? people are afraid to lose it
2) Status – two sides. Respect and admiration both for abiding law or for breaking law.
Problematic element 3) Stimulation –
4) Autonomy – everyone wants independence, sometimes people may resort to criminality in order to achieve it
5) Security – a desire for comfort and physical safety, punishments often threaten security 6) Money – fines attack wealth as well as the forfeit does
7) Believes – similar to Hirschi’s last element
all these elements can act towards conformity, but several can also encourage criminality.
Control Balance Theory – Charles Tittle (1995)
• According to the Control Balance Theory, both the probability of deviant behavior occurring and the characteristic form of deviation are determined by the relationship between the control that a person is exposed to and the control that he exercises himself.
• every human being is not only passively exposed to control, but also actively exercises control over others. The relationship between actively exercised and self-experienced control is important here -> ’control ratio’
• If the experienced and the exercised control are in balance, “Control Balance” exists. In this state, deviant behavior is unlikely.
• If someone exercises more control than he or she experiences, there is a control surplus. In this state, individuals tend to engage in autonomous forms of crime. This refers to acts of a more indirect nature. There are few direct confrontations with the victim.
• If an individual experiences more control than he or she exercises, there is a control deficit.
Repressive forms of deviance occur. These are characterized by direct confrontations with the victim.
Conformity is the act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to group norms or politics.
Harvard psychologist Herbert Kelman identified three major types of conformity:
• compliance (need of aproval, fear of being rejected),
• Identification (conforming to someone who is liked and respected) and
• Internalization (accepting the belief or behaviour and conforming both publicly and privately – the strongest one)
• Conformity can occur in the presence of others, or when an individual is alone.
What is obedience?
• It is a form of social influence in which a person accepts instructions or orders from an authority figure.
Obedience
• Obedience differs from compliance, which is behavior influenced by peers, and from conformity, which is behavior intended to match that of the majority.
• Obedience can be seen as both a sin and a virtue. For example in a situation when one orders a person to kill another innocent person and he or she does this willingly, it is a sin. However, when one orders a person to kill an enemy who will end a lot of innocent lives and he or she does this willingly, it can be deemed a virtue.
STANLEY MILGRAM’S
EXPERIMENT
Source: http://theconversation.com/revisiting-milgrams-shocking-obedience-experiments- 24787
• Milgram's experiment consisted of investigating the reasons for obedience to improper and criminal orders.
• The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (Philip Zimbardo’s)
Stanley Milgram and his experiment
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOUEC5YXV8U
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdrKCilEhC0
Informal means of control
• Informal social control refers to the reactions of individuals and groups that bring about conformity to norms and laws.
• Informal sanctions may include shame, ridicule, sarcasm, criticism, and disapproval.
• In extreme cases sanctions may include social discrimination and exclusion.
Most common social groups with the biggest influence on behaviour of an individual
• FAMILY, PEER GROUP, SCHOOL, WORK
• Why?
FAMILY
• The most commonly quoted control factor
• Haskell and Yablonsky (1982) – the effects of a family breakdown, death of one of the parents, desertion, divorce
• Well and Rankin in 1991 compared 50 studies concerning broken homes and delinquency between 1926 and 1988. From this officially recorded delinquency had a stronger relationship with broken homes than did self-reported delinquency and broken homes had a significantly higher prevalence of delinquency that did two-parent homes (10—15 percent higher).
FAMILY
• Some have recently suggested that the factor of broken homes is less importat than the quality of the relationship between the child and parents (parent).
• Father – a traditional head of the family
• In 1982 McCord claimed that the real link between broken homes and offending turned around whether the mother was loving : for males brought up in broken homes with unloving mother the prevalece of offending was 62 % against 22 % in similar homes with loving mothers.
• The relationship with mother is crucial – rather than the status of the home.
• Problem with defining a family - single mothers, single fathers, parents who are of the same sex, adopted children, unmarried parents
FAMILY
• Wilson in 1980 studied the delinquency of young people in a socially deprived area of Birmingham and found that in families where parents closely supervised their children and insulated them from the local
delinquent peer culture delinquency was low whereas other families in the area had a high rate of delinquency.
• Changes in the family bonds and their importance.
PEER GROUPS, COLLEAGUES AND NEIGHBOURHOOD. RELIGION
• Peer groups – might encurage to abide or to break the law – suport, prestige, admiration, affection, status – we go back to Roshier’s 7 elements
• Steven Box in 1987 took ideas of peer groups and applied them to adults - he referred to corporate crime as being committed partly because colleagues encourage each other.
• Attachment to religion
• Importance of religion
• Maybe religion only provides the backdrop in which the individual will form relationships with other individuals and it is these relationships, not the religion itself, which form the social bond for conformity (social control theory)??
Socialization – a lifelong process
• Primary socialization
• Secondary socialization
• Re-socialization
• 1) Forms of social control as given by Karl Mannheim:
• Karl Mannheim, the famous social thinker, has categorised social control under the following two heads:
• Direct social control
• Indirect social control
Forms of social control as given by Kimball Young:
Positive social control Negative social control
Hayes’s classification of social control:
Control by sanction
Control by socialisation and education
• Informal means of Social Control:
• 1. Norms:
• 2. Value:
• 3. Folk Ways:
• 4. Mores:
• 5. Custom
• 6. Belief System
• 7. Ideology
• 8. Social Suggestions
• 9. Religion
• 10. Art
Formal means of control
• Education, law, coercion
The role of punishment
• General and individual crime prevention
• Isolation
• Informing
• Positive and negative general crime prevention
• Protective measures
• Penal (punitive) measures
• severity or the inevitability of the punishment??
Agencies of social control
• Family
• Peer group
• State
• Group of co-workers
• Neighbourhood
• Educational institutions
• Public opinion
• Propaganda and press
• Economic organisation
