Self Control And Crime Over The Life Course

What exactly is self-control, and what life outcomes does it affect? What causes a person to have high or low self-control to begin with? What effect does self-control have on crime and other harmful behavior? Using a clear, conversational writing style, Self-Control and Crime Over the Life Course answers critical questions about self-control and its importance for understanding criminal behavior. Authors Carter Hay and Ryan Meldrum use intuitive examples to draw attention to the close connection between self-control and the behavioral choices people make, especially in reference to criminal, deviant, and harmful behaviors that often carry short-term benefits but long-term costs. The text builds an overall theoretical perspective that conveys the multi-disciplinary nature of modern-day self-control research. Moreover, far from emphasizing only theoretical issues, the authors place public policy at the forefront, using self-control research to inform policy efforts that reduce the societal costs of low self-control and the behaviors it enables.

What exactly is self-control, and what life outcomes does it affect? What causes a person to have high or low self-control to begin with? What effect does self-control have on crime and other harmful behavior? Using a clear, conversational writing style, Self-Control and Crime Over the Life Course answers critical questions about self-control and its importance for understanding criminal behavior. Authors Carter Hay and Ryan Meldrum use intuitive examples to draw attention to the close connection between self-control and the behavioral choices people make, especially in reference to criminal, deviant, and harmful behaviors that often carry short-term benefits but long-term costs. The text builds an overall theoretical perspective that conveys the multi-disciplinary nature of modern-day self-control research. Moreover, far from emphasizing only theoretical issues, the authors place public policy at the forefront, using self-control research to inform policy efforts that reduce the societal costs of low self-control and the behaviors it enables.

By articulating a general theory of crime and related behavior, the authors present a new and comprehensive statement of what the criminological enterprise should be about. They argue that prevalent academic criminology—whether sociological, psychological, biological, or economic—has been unable to provide believable explanations of criminal behavior. The long-discarded classical tradition in criminology was based on choice and free will, and saw crime as the natural consequence of unrestrained human tendencies to seek pleasure and to avoid pain. It concerned itself with the nature of crime and paid little attention to the criminal. The scientific, or disciplinary, tradition is based on causation and determinism, and has dominated twentieth-century criminology. It concerns itself with the nature of the criminal and pays little attention to the crime itself. Though the two traditions are considered incompatible, this book brings classical and modern criminology together by requiring that their conceptions be consistent with each other and with the results of research. The authors explore the essential nature of crime, finding that scientific and popular conceptions of crime are misleading, and they assess the truth of disciplinary claims about crime, concluding that such claims are contrary to the nature of crime and, interestingly enough, to the data produced by the disciplines themselves. They then put forward their own theory of crime, which asserts that the essential element of criminality is the absence of self-control. Persons with high self-control consider the long-term consequences of their behavior; those with low self-control do not. Such control is learned, usually early in life, and once learned, is highly resistant to change. In the remainder of the book, the authors apply their theory to the persistent problems of criminology. Why are men, adolescents, and minorities more likely than their counterparts to commit criminal acts? What is the role of the school in the causation of delinquincy? To what extent could crime be reduced by providing meaningful work? Why do some societies have much lower crime rates than others? Does white-collar crime require its own theory? Is there such a thing as organized crime? In all cases, the theory forces fundamental reconsideration of the conventional wisdom of academians and crimina justic practitioners. The authors conclude by exploring the implications of the theory for the future study and control of crime.

The wide-ranging scope of the Handbook of Life-Course Criminology covers genetics and environment, child offenders and late bloomers, the impact of school and peers, lifelong and time-limited criminal careers, and qualitative and quantitative methodologies. This unique Handbook is further set apart by its dual coverage of the leading edge of current research and innovative directions for future work in the field. Pathways to crime have been a central concept of criminology from its inception. Accordingly, a lifespan approach to the field has replaced earlier biological and sociological perspectives with a more nuanced understanding of offender behavior and a wider lens of study. The contributions to this Handbook break down issues of criminal and antisocial behavior from early childhood to late adulthood, examining developmentally targeted prevention and intervention strategies and reviewing emerging trends in research. Among the topics: · Childhood: including physical aggression in childhood, pre- and peri-natal development, and environment. · Adolescence: the impact of schooling, unstructured time with peers, gang membership and peer networks. · Adulthood: Adult onset crime, unemployment in emerging adulthood, crime and adult outcomes. · Prevention and Intervention: community programs, lifetime intervention strategies, re-entry. This volume will be a valuable piece for researchers in Criminology and Criminal Justice as well as related disciplines such as Sociology, Developmental Psychology, and Social Policy. It will serve as an important reference for the current state of research, as well as a roadmap for future scholars. "This impressive Handbook provides comprehensive coverage of key developmental and life course issues in criminology from birth to adulthood, including biology, genetics, gangs, schools, neighborhoods, adult onset, desistance, and interventions. The research recommendations in each chapter are especially important, and they should stimulate advances in knowledge for many years to come. This Handbook should be required reading for all criminologists." David P. Farrington, Professor of Psychological Criminology, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK “In just a few decades developmental criminology has become the dominant intellectual force in criminology. This volume demonstrates why. It provides incisive reviews of important themes in developmental criminology. More importantly, it lays out rich agendas for future research that should inspire the next generation of developmental criminologists.” Daniel S. Nagin, Teresa and H. John Heinz III University Professor of Public Policy and Statistics, Carnegie Melon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Control theories have dominated criminological theory and research since the 1969 publication of Hirschi's seminal work on the social bond. Social control and self-control theorists are unique in suggesting that patterns in criminal behaviors are better explained by variations in social constraints rather than by individual motivational impulses, thus indicating that their main concerns are the explication and clarification of the techniques, processes, and institutions of informal social control. The four major sections of this volume focus on: the similarities and differences among the major contributors to the early developmental stage of social control theory; the central importance of parents, peers, and schools in the creation of informal control mechanisms and their link to crime and delinquency; the theoretical underpinnings of self-control theory, including empirical tests and criticisms; and theoretical integrations of social control and self-control theories with various motivational theories of crime and delinquency.

A Fully Updated Second Edition of a Groundbreaking Text The only textbook of its kind, Criminological Theory: A Life-Course Approach, Second Edition includes original chapters written by an interdisciplinary group of scholars and experts. The unique collection of contributors comes from the fields of psychology, social work, epidemiology, criminology, psychiatry, and sociology. Unlike other criminology textbooks, which focus exclusively on environmental and social correlates to criminal behavior, Criminological Theory uses a multi-disciplinary approach that synthesizes multiple factors and presents a more comprehensive picture of life-course antisocial behavior. Rather than concentrating exclusively on adolescence and adulthood, Criminological Theory examines the development of offending behaviors from birth through death. Each chapter incorporates a glossary of key terms to facilitate comprehension of topics and disciplines that might be unfamiliar to criminologists. The revised and updated second edition includes critical overviews of current research and presents avenues for future research, as well as empirical chapters featuring quantitative analyses and more traditional overview pieces. Innovative and groundbreaking, Criminological Theory: A Life-Course Approach, Second Edition is an essential text for students of criminology, criminal justice, and sociology.

This ebook is a selective guide designed to help scholars and students of criminology find reliable sources of information by directing them to the best available scholarly materials in whatever form or format they appear from books, chapters, and journal articles to online archives, electronic data sets, and blogs. Written by a leading international authority on the subject, the ebook provides bibliographic information supported by direct recommendations about which sources to consult and editorial commentary to make it clear how the cited sources are interrelated related. A reader will discover, for instance, the most reliable introductions and overviews to the topic, and the most important publications on various areas of scholarly interest within this topic. In criminology, as in other disciplines, researchers at all levels are drowning in potentially useful scholarly information, and this guide has been created as a tool for cutting through that material to find the exact source you need. This ebook is a static version of an article from Oxford Bibliographies Online: Criminology, a dynamic, continuously updated, online resource designed to provide authoritative guidance through scholarship and other materials relevant to the study and practice of criminology. Oxford Bibliographies Online covers most subject disciplines within the social science and humanities, for more information visit www.aboutobo.com.