Theories Of Social Control Theory

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In today’s society the theory known as social control theory was a theory that most individuals could have found themselves relating to. Theorists that helped in the development of the social control theory did not ask the one major question of what made an individual a criminal or act in a deviant way, these theorists shared a thought that deviant behavior was to be expected. This theory did not end up becoming popular till the mid 1970’s and the theory really blossomed into three distinct trends (Williams &McShane, 2014). The first trend that was in the social control theory was the reaction to the labeling and conflict orientation and return to the examination of criminal behavior of a deviant individual (Williams &McShane, 2014). The second trend in the social control theory was the rise in the study criminal justice as a discipline helped move criminology in a system orientated direction. Lastly social control theories were linked with a new research technique that was used for finding delinquent behavior which were called the self-report survey, which became very popular. In the social control theory what must have been explained is why individuals made the decision to obey the rules that were made for the individuals, not what made them act in a deviant way. Some theorists in the social control theory demonstrated the view of human nature which reflected the beliefs of the theorist Thomas Hobbes an English philosopher who was convinced that human nature was just an evil thing. The modern versions of social control theory were the reactions to strain theories (Williams &McShane, 2014). The theories in the Chicago school also played a critical in the development of the social control theory; the ideas of the Chicago school c...

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..., 2014). The social control theory was classified as positivists, process, microtheoretical, and consensus. The social control theory relied on specialized methodology of discovering crime and criminality for evidence. Such as self report surveys, official crime reports statistics or victimization data. When those other methodologies were used to produced evidence, the social control theory suffers (Williams &McShane, 2014). Social control theory contained pieces from differential association, social disorganization, and anomie theory which made it more attractive to several other criminologists (Williams &McShane, 2014). In general the social control theories were somewhat methodology bound (Williams &McShane, 2014). The social control theory was probably one of the theories that mostly matched the public conception of why people became criminals and more relatable.

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