Gottfredson's Social Bond Theory

The Social Bond theory originated in 1969 when Travis Hirschi first described it. Travis was an American criminologist and This was his attempt of explaining people’s approaches to social problems and how they explain them. He wanted to explain why criminals act the way they do. He described the social bond theory to include elements such as family attachment, adhering to social norms and institutional norms and getting involved in different activities because such elements are of importance and value. He found that these elements of human relationships were among the key factors that keep people from acts of crime and defiance. In his theory, he demonstrates that when either of these social bonds are weakened, then a person is more prone to

This was after they found that criminal acts were mainly influenced by the presence or lack of self-control among the people. They described that self-control was mainly influenced by the type of parenting one received. If one was brought up well, they tend to have more self-control and as a result re less likely to be involved in criminal works. They found that self-control is the main determinant of how prone one is to temptations to commit crime. If the self-control is high, they are able to avoid it. Other than parenting, self-control is also influenced by hormones and

This was developed by Steven Messner and Richard Rosenfeld in 1994. This theory explained that crime occurs if an economy operates without constraints from other institutions such as family. This is because people and companies focus on attaining success by any means possible with no social norms and values to restrain them. Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin also came up with the illegitimate opportunities theory. This was also in an attempt to further describe the strain theory. They argued that people mainly engage in crime because there are so many illegitimate opportunities available as opposed to legitimate ones.

The strain theory has been subjected to a lot of criticism over the years. Many have argued that strain and societal pressures alone cannot be used to explain why people turn to crime. Not everyone who fails to attain their goals or societal expectations turns to crime. Hence there has to be a better explanation why some do and others do