General Theory Of Crime Research Articles

Examining the Effect of Ineffective Parenting and Low Self-Control on Athletes’ PED Use

The prevalence of performance-enhancing drug (PED) use at different levels of professional sport has become an important social issue, particularly when considering recent high-profile incidents from professional sports and the Olympics. Due to the myriad of individual, team, and sociopolitical consequences that can stem from PED use, it becomes critical to study the etiology of PED involvement among athletes regarding this deviant behavior. Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime is one such theory that may aid in explaining this phenomenon. As such, the main purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between effective parenting, self-control, and athletes’ use of banned PEDs. Survey data from 784 professional athletes in Iran were collected, and the findings indicated that ineffective parenting, low self-control capacity, and self-control desire had significant effects on PED use. In addition, moderation effects and gender analyses were examined. Specific findings, policy implications, and study limitations are discussed.

Gang Organization and Gang Identity: An Investigation of Enduring Gang Membership

Motivated by recent advances in the study of disengagement from street gangs, this research develops a theoretical framework of enduring gang membership based on gang organization and gang identity. Using multivariate data, this research tests the theoretical framework against a competing theory derived from the general theory of crime where gang organization and gang identity are non-existent or unimportant in producing enduring gang membership. Eight waves of panel data on high-risk youth from the Denver Youth Survey and discrete-time event-history models are used to investigate enduring gang membership. The length of time an individual spends in a gang is associated with the perceived organization of the gang and an individual’s gang identity. In a hazard model, accounting for right censoring, low self-control, and contextual time-varying gang related variables, increases in gang identity were associated with (on average) a 26% lower rate of reporting no longer being a gang member. Increases in perceived gang organization were associated with (on average) a 12% lower rate of reporting no longer being a gang member. Surprisingly however, no association was found between gang organization and gang identity. This research finds support for using a theoretical framework based on gang organization and gang identity to understand enduring gang membership. Both gang identity and gang organization exert independent effects on the length of time an individual spends in a gang.

Definitions Favorable to Terrorism? SSSL and Radicalization: A Case Study Approach

Although social structure and social learning (SSSL) theory has oft been proposed as a general theory of crime, it has rarely been applied to that which qualifies as ideologically-motivated. We seek to rectify this notable gap in the research by examining the suitability of an SSSL framework to radicalization; an understudied, yet vital process to enacting evidence-based counterterrorism efforts. Utilizing a “most likely” case study approach, we find several themes consistent with SSSL principles, primarily within its social learning constructs. We conclude that SSSL does indeed offer promise for explaining all forms of crime including acts of terrorism.

‘Gender’ and general strain theory: investigating the impact of gender socialization on young women’s criminal outcomes

ABSTRACTThe gender gap in crime is one of the most highly researched issues in criminology. Despite women’s consistently low representation across all crime statistics, general theories of crime are commonly utilized to understand women’s pathways to offending without acknowledging their distinct lived experiences. Broidy and Agnew’s gendered general strain (GGST) attempts to bring gender forefront within a general strain theory framework by outlining the differences in experiences and responses to strain between women and men. An underlying assumption of GGST, however, remains under-examined – the role of gender socialization. This study investigates the influence of gender socialization on criminal outcomes for young women. We address a central overarching research question: does the degree of internalized gender norms – either heteronormative femininity or masculinity – influence young women’s experiences or responses to strain as well as their likelihood of engaging in illegal behaviors? Using a sample of female college students, we find internalized gender norms – either being more traditionally feminine or more traditionally masculine – condition experiences and responses to strain in distinct ways. Our findings highlight the need to explore the differential impacts of gender identity and internalized gender norms. Implications for theory and research are discussed.

Self-Control and Deviance: A Test of the General Theory of Crime in Argentina

ABSTRACTGottfredson and Hirschi’s General Theory of Crime (GTC) has been one of the most cited and tested theories in criminology. It posits to be in effect transcultural in its application and relevant for any norm-violating behaviors. As most empirical work has been completed in English speaking countries, the current study tested some of the main theoretical postulates in a sample of 214 Argentinean male adolescents, both offenders and non-offenders. More specifically, it tested the relationships between parental practices, self-control, criminal opportunities, and deviance. Findings provide evidence that offenders reported more deviant behaviors and more risk factors than non-offenders. They also provide partial empirical support for the main theoretical propositions. Maternal closeness, support. and monitoring had different effects on self-control and on deviance; both low self-control and opportunities had direct effects of deviant behaviors. Theoretical, research, and practical implications of study findings are discussed.

The Effects of Life Domains on Cyberbullying and Bullying: Testing the Generalizability of Agnew’s Integrated General Theory

In 2005, Robert Agnew published his book Why Criminals Offend in which he synthesized an array of theoretical predictors of crime and delinquency into a parsimonious integrated general theory. He argued that delinquency is influenced by mechanisms found in five distinct life domains: self, family, peer, school, and work. Using longitudinal data from South Korea, the current research tested the generalizability of Agnew’s theory by applying it to bullying and cyberbullying. Results from a negative binomial regression model provided mixed support for Agnew’s theory as a general theory of crime. The significant effects of life domains were found to differ across types of bullying.

Underage Drinking in America: An Explanation through the Lens of the General Theory of Crime

ABSTRACTDespite the high rate of drinking among adolescents and its negative consequences, studies regarding causality of drinking behaviors have been under-examined. Regarding causal factors of underage drinking, Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime provided a useful theoretical frame. Using the data set of “Monitoring the Future: A Continuing Study of American Youth,” this study conducted multiple regression analyses with the selected sample data set of 4,626. The results indicated that adolescents with a lower self-control were more likely to drink than those with a high self-control. Furthermore, opportunity (i.e., accessibility of alcohol and drinking peers) was a strong predictor of underage drinking. Particularly, this study found a significant effect of the interaction between low self-control and opportunity on drinking among American youth. Thus, this study strongly supports the general theory of crime as well as provides an approach to reduce underage drinking in America.

A Multi-Informant Study of the Role of Household Disorder in Low Self-Control

The current study expands upon Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (1990) General Theory of Crime by examining associations between multiple forms of household disorder and low self-control, as well as the potential for attenuated informal social controls within the home to account for these associations. Multi-informant data from the Fragile Families & Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) are employed in the present study. Multiple regression-based techniques (e.g., negative binomial regression, logistic regression) are executed in a stepwise fashion to address our research questions. The findings indicate that one form of household disorder in particular, Household Health/Safety Hazards, yielded significant associations with low self-control across multiple model specifications. Informal social control exerted by parents within the home did not appear to explain this relationship. Future research should consider the possibility that certain forms of disorder in the immediate ecological context of the home may attenuate self-control and should explore other potential explanations of the findings.

年齢犯罪曲線に対するMoffitt仮説とGeneral Theory of Crimeの検証

年齢犯罪曲線に対するMoffitt仮説とGeneral Theory of Crimeの検証

Parent–Child Relations and Delinquency Among African American and European American Juvenile Offenders: An Expanded Examination of Self-Control Theory

Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime indicates that low levels of self-control leads to subsequent delinquency. Multiple studies suggest an indirect effect of parent and family factors on delinquency through self-control. Furthermore, evidence exists that race/ethnicity may affect the mediated relationship between parenting and delinquency. The present study collected information on demographics, parent–child attachment, self-control, and delinquency from 350 confined male adolescents. Models were run to test whether self-control mediated the relationship between total parent–child attachment and facets of parent–child attachment on delinquency. Results indicated self-control mediated the relationship between parent attachment and delinquent behavior. Follow-up models indicated uniquely influential pathways to delinquency depending on aspects of parent-child attachment and the race/ethnicity of the participant. Select aspects of parent–child attachment were more meaningfully predictive of self-control and delinquency among African American youth compared with European American youth. Furthermore, while models run with European American adolescents support previous theories and study outcomes on the link between self-control and delinquency, self-control levels did not predict delinquency within models rung with African American adolescents, identifying a possible limitation of self-control theory. Implications from the present study are discussed alongside future directions for continuing research on culturally informed models of self-control and delinquency.

Conducta antisocial adolescente bajo un enfoque integrador de tres teorías criminológicas

Con el fin de someter a contraste las teorías de Asociación Diferencial, Control Social y General del delito, se analizó la relación entre conducta antisocial y los constructos de las teorías, a saber, “definiciones favorables” (Asociación diferencial), “apego” (Control Social) y “autocontrol”, empleando un enfoque integrado proposicional side-by-side de Tibbets y Hemmens, (2010) que permitió determinar el peso de dichos constructos en la predicción de la conducta antisocial mediante un modelo de regresión logística binaria por bloques explicativos que incluyó variables sociodemográficas como el sexo y el tamaño de la ciudad. Se encuestaron 2.395 adolescentes de escuelas ubicadas en tres ciudades (grande, mediana y pequeña) de Venezuela. Se encontró que, de las tres variables de la teoría de asociación diferencial, las definiciones favorables de los amigos hacia la participación en actos delictivos se desempeñaron como predictores de la conducta antisocial a nivel individual. De las diez variables de la teoría del control social, el apego a la escuela y la participación en actividades sin supervisión familiar tuvieron capacidad predictiva. El autocontrol de la teoría general del delito predice la conducta antisocial. Se concluye que los datos empíricos apoyan los planteamientos de dichas teorías.

The Relationship Between Self-Control and Friendship Conflict: An analysis of Friendship Pairs.

While Gottfredson and Hirschi's general theory of crime is one of the most empirically tested theories of deviance, the theory offers hypotheses that range far beyond how self-control should affect behavior. This study is broadly focused on how self-control operates between friends by considering how the general theory's main construct relates to friendship conflict. Using a large dyadic dataset, three-level hybrid item-response models regress the actor's proclivity to experience conflict with the friend onto measures of the actor's self-control, the friend's self-control, and an interaction between the self-control estimates. Results demonstrate that the actor's and the friend's self-control both significantly relate to friendship conflict, as the theory would expect. However, the actor's and friend's levels of self-control do not interact.

Applying Differential Coercion and Social Support Theory to Intimate Partner Violence.

A review of the current body of literature on intimate partner violence (IPV) shows that the most common theories used to explain this public health issue are social learning theory, a general theory of crime, general strain theory, or a combination of these perspectives. Other criminological theories have received less empirical attention. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to apply Differential Coercion and Social Support (DCSS) theory to test its capability to explain IPV. Data collected from two public universities (N = 492) shows that three out of four measures of coercion (i.e., physical abuse, emotional abuse, and anticipated strain) predicted IPV perpetration, whereas social support was not found to be significant. Only two social-psychological deficits (anger and self-control) were found to be positive and significant in predicting IPV. Results, as well as the study's limitations and suggestions for future research, are discussed.

What Do We Know About Crime and Place Research in the Classroom? An Exploratory Study

Traditional person-based theories of crime causation, such as social control theory or a general theory of crime, are often at the forefront of developing students’ knowledge on the causes of crime. However, these perspectives do not address the settings in which crime activity occurs. This study explores the significance of a place-based approach to explaining crime theory and practice in the classroom setting. We argue this paradigm shift in how we traditionally think about crime causation and may take longer to be implemented in the classroom setting. Specifically, it is hypothesized that teaching crime and place at very small micro units of analysis is not as prevalent as teaching crime and place a large macro units of analysis. This study is exploratory in nature and uses descriptive statics from the top 28 graduate programs in Criminology and Criminal Justice in the United States, as identified by the US News and World Report, as a way to demonstrate whether any of these institutions have courses that relate to crime and place. Our findings indicate that although some programs teach crime and place at micro units of analysis, instruction is largely focused on crime and place at larger geographic units. Including discussions on crime and place in the classroom, especially at micro units of analysis, can enhance our understanding of crime causation and, arguably, provide a more well-rounded approach to the study of crime.

The Mediating Effect of Self-Control on Parenting and Delinquency: A Gendered Approach With a Multinational Sample.

This study aims to clarify the relationships between parenting techniques, low self-control, and juvenile delinquency in Gottfredson and Hirschi's general theory of crime while controlling for alternative explanations of delinquency. We relied on a sample of 35,511 adolescent students from 31 countries from the International Self-Report Delinquency 2 Study. Results indicate that parenting exhibits a direct effect on adolescents' violence perpetration and property offending, and that while self-control weakens the strength of this relationship, it fails to fully mediate it. Males reported lower levels of self-control, exposure to poorer parenting techniques, and higher rates of violence perpetration and property offending. The relationship between parenting, self-control, and juvenile delinquency was similar for females and males. These results provide evidence that parenting has important implications for adolescents' involvement in delinquency above and beyond its influence on their level of self-control.

Quick on the Draw

Police officers have a continuum of force options available to them, but, without question, the most extreme of these options is deadly force. Recent officer-involved shootings in the United States, and their subsequent media attention, have placed police use of deadly force at the forefront of political, academic, and policy conversations. While the extant literature has uncovered numerous structural, organizational, and situational predictors of police shootings, studies to date are more limited with respect to individual-level factors and have essentially ignored criminological theoretical constructs. Using Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime as a theoretical framework, the current study fills a gap in the literature by using personal and agency records of 1,935 Philadelphia police officers to examine the relationship between low self-control and officer-involved shootings. The results indicate that officers with lower self-control are significantly more likely to have been involved in a police shooting.

Self-control and crime revisited: Disentangling the effect of self-control on risk taking and antisocial behavior

Low self-control is considered a fundamental cause of crime. The aim of our study is to provide causal evidence on the link between self-control and criminal behavior. We test whether individuals with lower self-control behave in a more antisocial manner and are less risk-averse and thus are, according to both the General Theory of Crime and the economic literature on criminal behavior, more likely to engage in criminal activities. In order to exogenously vary the level of self-control in a laboratory experiment, we use a well-established experimental manipulation, a so-called depletion task. We find that subjects with low self-control take more risk. The effect of self-control on antisocial behavior is small and not significant. In sum, our findings are consistent with the proposition that low self-control is a facilitator of crime to the extent that individuals with lower levels of self-control are less effectively deterred by probabilistic sanctions.

A Comprehensive Investigation of Youth Deviance: Theoretical Distinction by Deviant Behavior Sub-Types

ABSTRACTScholars have critiqued the field of criminology as focusing too heavily on positioning theories against one another in competition to reveal a “general theory of crime.” Such an approach assumes that the same factors influence all forms deviance, which is a problematic assumption, given that different forms of deviance can be influenced by different sets of factors. This study draws on two prominent criminological theories to specify the individual mechanisms driving several different forms of juvenile delinquency. Findings demonstrate the need for different theories of crime and deviance, and have implications for the way scholars approach and study theories in criminology.

Why Do Adults Engage in Cyberbullying on Social Media? An Integration of Online Disinhibition and Deindividuation Effects with the Social Structure and Social Learning Model

The dramatic increase in social media use has challenged traditional social structures and shifted a great deal of interpersonal communication from the physical world to cyberspace. Much of this social media communication has been positive: Anyone around the world who has access to the Internet has the potential to communicate with and attract a massive global audience. Unfortunately, such ubiquitous communication can be also used for negative purposes such as cyberbullying, which is the focus of this paper. Previous research on cyberbullying, consisting of 135 articles, has improved the understanding of why individuals—mostly adolescents—engage in cyberbullying. However, our study addresses two key gaps in this literature: (1) how the information technology (IT) artifact fosters/inhibits cyberbullying and (2) why people are socialized to engage in cyberbullying. To address these gaps, we propose the social media cyberbullying model (SMCBM), which modifies Akers’ [Akers RL (2011) Social Learning and Social Structure: A General Theory of Crime and Deviance, 2nd ed. (Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ)] social structure and social learning model. Because Akers developed his model for crimes in the physical world, we add a rich conceptualization of anonymity composed of five subconstructs as a key social media structural variable in the SMCBM to account for the IT artifact. We tested the SMCBM with 1,003 adults who have engaged in cyberbullying. The empirical findings support the SMCBM. Heavy social media use combined with anonymity facilitates the social learning process of cyberbullying in social media in a way that fosters cyberbullying. Our results indicate new directions for cyberbullying research and implications for anticyberbullying practices.

The Effect of Attachment and Self-Control on Status Offending among Puerto Rican High School Students

This study tests the cross-cultural applicability of Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime and self-control theory by examining self-reported status offenses among a sample of Puerto Rican adolescents. Data come from a 2005 sample of 298 youth ages 14–19, representing both the public and private school systems in Puerto Rico. Using a series of multivariate regressions, three hypotheses were tested. First, low attachment to parents, schools, peers, and church will positively and significantly predict status offenses among both public and private students. Second, low self-control will positively and significantly increase status offenses among each group. Finally, the effects of attachment on offending will be mediated by self-control. Results show support for both social control theory (via institutional attachment) and general theory of crime (via self-control). Both the measures of attachment and self-control contribute to explaining status offenses. Self-control partially mediates the effects of attachment on status offenses.