Psychology of criminal behavior

Social Control Theory

Today's world is much different than yesterday's. The ever-changing situations that people are placed in makes it difficult if not impossible to narrow down causes for criminal behavior. Social control theory attempts to explain criminal behavior as a composite result of the social scenario one is placed in throughout the many differing levels of society. The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate the practicality of social control theory in explaining crime and criminal behavior.

Silver & Miller's (2004) analysis of informal social control within the violent streets of Chicago makes a decent argument at explaining some, but not all of the factors that contribute to criminal behavior in that region. The authors eventually concluded that "as in virtually all studies based on cross-sectional data, a precise determination of the causal ordering among our measures was beyond our reach. Thus, we must remain cautious when considering the relationship observed here between neighborhood attachment and informal social control." Studies often fail to convince clear relationships when dealing with crime and behavior as these researchers freely admit.

This does not mean that social control theory does not have value in understanding the criminal mind. To some degree, perhaps half, environment and social conditions contribute to any behavior, criminal or otherwise. The other half, or at least a significant portion, must be attributed to the individual himself. To suggest otherwise would proclaim that free will has no place in human development. The elimination of free will makes humanity robotic and irrelevant, something I cannot agree with.

Kubrin (n.d.) made some convincing arguments that environment does contribute to at least the opportunity for people to act as criminals. Her argument that crime does cluster into certain and non-random regions suggests that there is some relationship between society and crime. But what is not clear is the causality. Do criminals seek out safe regions to commit their crimes, or are certain areas inherently destined to house criminal activity? Social control needs individuals acting on their own free will in order to complete the circle of logic in this argument. Both sides are needed to make a coherent and rational understanding of the subject.