Assess The Contribution Of Control Theory To Our Understanding Of Crime And Criminality

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Student Number

72620

Degree Course Title

BSc Policing and Police Studies

Unit Title

Issues in Criminology

Question Title

Assess the contribution of control theory to our understanding of crime and criminality

Assess The Contribution Of Control Theory To Our Understanding Of Crime And Criminality

Introduction

Before evaluating the contribution of control theory, the understanding of crime and criminality needs to be explained. "What is crime?" "Who commits crime?" These are questions that we will address. Crime or unaccepted social behaviour stems back many years but it is the political element of introducing defined laws that has had a significant effect on the population. Criminality is the etiology of those that defy the laws and do not conform to social norms.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794) were earlier influences from the eighteenth century and their thinking about crime gave birth to what is now known as the 'Classical School'. The classical thought did not put any emphasis on the individual and took everybody as being equal in his or her decision to act criminally. Other theories developed from this period and looked more into the individual and social causes. This was known as the positivist approach. Biological and psychological theories of criminality tended to take this approach. Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) developed one of the early sociological theories.

We will look at this early approach to crime and how it has progressed into modern criminology. These disciplines are in the main trying to find the answer to the question, "Why do people commit crime?"

Control theory asks the question, "Why do people not commit crime?" This is a parallel contrast to most other theories whereby the interest is on the causation of the offender. Control theory assumes that everyone is subject to temptations to engage in rewarding criminal behaviour, what needs to be understood is what stops most people, most of the time, from succumbing to such temptations. Some of the main voices of this field are Travis Hirschi, Michael Gottfredson, Walter Reckless, and Ivan Nye. We will look at their contributions in detail especially that of Gottfredson and Hirschi.

Finally we will discuss the worth of control theory and evaluate what implications it has had on modern society along with whether it is regarded as being axiomatic.

Crime and Criminality

Prior to the seventeenth century the law was greatly influenced by that of monarchical and religious authorities. Crimes committed against the establishment and /or the church were dealt with by brutal and bloody punishments.

The origins of the concept of crime are found in the classical tradition. A conception of crime presupposes a conception of human nature. (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990) These were represented by Hobbes, Bentham and Beccaria.

"Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure" (Bentham 1970)

Thomas Hobbes (1588- 1679) wrote the book Leviathan and described his laws of nature. He believed in the absence of social condition, every action we perform, no matter how charitable or benevolent, is done for reasons, which are ultimately self-serving. Hobbes believed that any account of human action, including morality, must be consistent with the fact that we are all self-serving. Hobbes speculates how selfish people would behave in a state of nature, prior to the formation of any government. He begins noting that humans are essentially equal, both mentally and physically, insofar as even the weakest person has the strength to kill the strongest.

Classical criminology grew out of a reaction against the barbaric system of law, justice and punishment that was in existence before 1789. It sought an emphasis on free will and human rationality. The Classical School was not interested in studying criminals, but rather law-making and legal processing. Crime, they believed, was activity engaged in out of total free will and that individuals weighed the consequences of their actions. Punishment is made in order to deter people from committing crime and it should be greater than the pleasure of criminal gains. Classical theory emphasized a legal definition of crime rather than what defined criminal behaviour.

Two famous writers during this classical period were Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794) and Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), both led the movement to human rights and free will. Beccaria thought that crime could be traced to bad laws, not to bad people. A new modern criminal justice system would be needed to guarantee equal treatment of all people before the law. His famous book, On Crimes and Punishment presented a new design for the criminal justice system that served all people. His book dubbed him the "father of modern criminology." It was the first attempt at presenting a systematic, consistent and logical penal system. Beccaria suggested that fixed punishments for all offences should be written into law and that the law must apply equally to all citizens and all who are guilty should suffer the same prescribed penalty. Prison sentences were held to be preferable, with prison work being both beneficial to both supply compensation to victims of crime and to deter potential offenders.

Bentham's concern was upon utilitarianism, which assumed the greatest happiness for the greatest number. He believed that individuals weigh the probabilities of present and future pleasures against those of present and future pain. Thus people acted as human calculators, he believed, and that they put all factors into a sort of mathematical equation to decide whether or not to commit an illegal act. He believed then that punishment should be just a bit in excess of the pleasures derived from an act and not any higher than that. The law exists to create happiness for all, thus since punishment creates unhappiness it can be justified if it prevents greater evil than it produces.
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Bentham described four general sources of pleasure and pain, or sanction systems: physical, political, moral and religious. Bentham used these four sanction elements to write a foundation for reforms of the criminal law and public crime control policy. Bentham eventually focused on the political sanctions and his work as well as that of the classical school came down to us as a political science rather than a behavioural science.

The nineteenth century saw the development of the biological and medical sciences and the scientists clashed with the classical school of thought. The scientists argued that their ...

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