Self-Control and Racial Disparities in Delinquency: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach

The purpose of the present study is to examine the racial disparities of offending within the context of self-control theory. The study utilized data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), to examine this effect. All concepts within self-control theory are examined: parental management, low self-control, and delinquency. Results from the study show partial support for Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (1990) self-control theory. The structure of the theory remained stable when controlling for both race, as well as peer pressure. Both theoretical and policy implications are given.     

Regulating Hedge Funds for Systemic Stability: The EU's Approach

This article offers a critical appraisal of the way in which the EU regulates hedge funds (HFs) in the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFM Directive) and its proposal to regulate the repo markets from which they obtain much of their leverage. It argues that the EU's scheme is not a radical departure from the pre‐crisis market liberalist approach and that its reliance on discretionary intervention is misplaced because it does not take account of the fundamental uncertainty that characterises financial markets. The article outlines the operations of HFs and explores the extent to which they pose a threat to systemic stability, paying particular attention to the use of leverage by HFs. It explores the background to the AIFM Directive and the post‐crisis international consensus on financial regulation and then evaluates the complex division of responsibility for regulating HFs between the national and supranational authorities. Finally, it discusses how HFs should be regulated. Drawing on the work of Minsky, it argues that a leverage cap would have been more likely to prevent HFs contributing to systemic instability than the scheme adopted. Nor are the proposed rules on mandatory ‘haircuts’ in repo markets or the AIFM Directive's rules on remuneration likely to prevent HFs contributing to systemic instability.     

A Twin Study of Sex Differences in Self-Control

Research has shown that males, on average, exhibit lower levels of self-control compared to females. While previous research points to socialization processes as a way to explain the gender gap, the current study investigates whether there are genetic differences in self-control that are operating across the sexes in adolescence and adulthood. First, the results revealed that the same genetic factors influence levels of self-control in males and females. This implies that the genetic influences on self-control are not gender-specific. Second, the results also revealed that the magnitude of the genetic effects on self-control is the same across the sexes. These findings are aligned with other studies that have found no significant sex differences in the genetic effects on constructs related to low self-control, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other self-regulatory problems. The implications of these findings for Gottfredson and Hirschi's theory are discussed.     

Adolescent Family Violence: Findings from a Group-Based Analysis

Journal of Family Violence - Current understanding of adolescent family violence (AFV) is fragmented, with research describing offenders and offending at the aggregate level or exploring different...     

Self-Control and Social Bonds: A Combined Control Perspective on Juvenile Offending

With longitudinal data from a sample of 359 adolescent offenders, we tested three measures of social bonding (conventional moral belief, attachment, and commitment/involvement) and deviant peer association as outcomes of low self-control and as mediators of the effect of low self-control on juvenile offending. Low self-control was negatively related to each bonding measure, positively related to deviant peer association, and positively related to offending at follow-up. Its effect on offending was fully mediated by conventional moral belief and attachment. These results provide modest support for a combination of self-control and social bonding perspectives on juvenile offending.     

The Moderation Effects of Family Structure and Low Self-Control

Gottfredson and Hirschi??s (1990) theory of low self-control (LSC) asserts the etiology of LSC lies in the ability of parents to correctly control their children. These parental behaviors are crucial to understanding how LSC may or may not be transmitted from parents to children. Little research has explored the potential moderating effects of family structure regarding parenting, LSC, and delinquency. Multi-group structural equation modeling is used with data from the National Evaluation of the Teens, Crime, and the Community/Community Works (TCC/CW) program (n?=?1,409) to assess these relationships. Results show LSC mediates the relationship between family structure and delinquency. Additionally, the relationships between parenting, LSC, and delinquency are invariant for children from intact or broken homes. It is suggested that future research explore the origins of parental efficacy and LSC beyond family structure while considering self-control as a multidimensional concept. Policy recommendations are also discussed.     

The Role of Group-Based Status in Job Satisfaction: Workplace Respect Matters More for the Stigmatized

Respectful treatment may be more consequential for members of stigmatized groups because they are often excluded from society. The present study examined the consequences of respectful treatment in the workplace on job satisfaction for members of stigmatized groups. Among a nationally representative sample of American adults, members of stigmatized groups showed a stronger relationship between respectful treatment and job satisfaction compared to their non-stigmatized counterparts. However, they did not show a stronger relationship between their pay and job satisfaction. The results point to the special importance of respect for members of stigmatized group as a means of reassuring their belonging and value in society.     

The Right to Privacy: A Discourse-Theoretical Approach

The relative importance of the right to privacy in constitutional democracies is reconsidered on the basis of discourse theory. To this end the author does not regard privacy as an aim in itself but as a provider of freedom, and concentrates on the key role that freedom plays in discourse-theoretical constructions of constitutional democracies.     

The Ethics of Corporate Lawyers: A Sociological Approach

The American Bar Association is considering a revision of its Code of Professional Responsibility. One revision deals specifically with lawyers whose clients are organizations; it attempts to delineate the ethical responsibilities of such lawyers when they discover an employee or a member of one of their clients is engaged in wrongdoing on the organization's behalf. Because the proposal suggests that corporate counsel may be justified in public disclosure of the wrongdoing when the organization itself fails to rectify the problem, it has sparked much controversy in the profession and much speculation as to whether and when corporate counsel will "blow the whistle." The article offers a sociological perspective on the act of a corporate counsel's public disclosure of organizational wrongdoing. The act of disclosure is treated as a social behavior, the likelihood of which is increased or decreased by a number of factors including the attorney's awareness of the wrongdoing, the attorney's orientations to the larger profession, the structure of the professional practice setting within which the counsel is located, and the supports for disclosure offered by the legal profession through its formal organizations. These factors are described and then combined into a general predictive model of disclosure by corporate counsel. A concluding discussion of the general ramifications of the proposed revisions focuses on the social implications of the attorney-client privilege, in which the client is as unique an actor as is the large organization.     

A Multi-Theoretical Framework to Assess Gendered Stalking Victimization: The Utility of Self-Control,Social Learning,and Control Balance Theories

Despite recent advancements in the criminological study of stalking, few theoretical tests have been conducted to date to explain stalking victimization among men and women separately. The current study individually and simultaneously extends three criminological theories to the study of stalking victimization: self-control, social learning, and control balance theories. Among a sample of 2,766 university students, a series of models were estimated for men and women separately to assess each set of theoretical variables net of control variables. Results reveal consistent significant positive relationships between stalking victimization and low self-control for men; differential peer association (e.g. friends are stalking victims) for men and women; and several social learning variables for only women. However, the control imbalance variables do not explain stalking victimization among men or women, net of other theoretical and control variables. The utility of a multi-theoretical approach to future stalking victimization research is discussed.     

Testing an Integration of Control Theories: The Role of Bonds and Self-Control in Decision Making

Since the redefinition of self-control (Hirschi, 2004) social bonding measures have been utilized as predictors or indicators of revised or decisional self-control. This approach departs from the prior literature which has hypothesized a selection effect of self-control on social bonds. To reconcile this discrepancy and explain the relationship among two self-control measures (attitudinal and revised self-control), an alternate model is proposed that explains the process of self-control on refrainment from offending at the situation level. Surveys using the vignette method for a hypothetical drunk-driving decision-making task were collected from large samples of young adults and inmates. Path analysis is used to model bonds and self-control as determinates of decisional self-control, thus indirectly influencing self-reported estimates of drunk-driving likelihood. Decisional self-control, attitudinal self-control and social bonds also directly affect intentions to drive drunk. Overall, the proposed model is supported. A strong direct effect of attitudinal self-control on drunk-driving likelihood remains while controlling for decisional self-control. There are relatively smaller indirect effects of social bonds and attitudinal self-control on drunk-driving likelihood, through their effects on decisional self-control. These findings support the need for the conceptual separation of bonds, attitudinal and decisional self-control as well as increased attention to differential effects of self-control.     

The Likelihood of Arrest: A Routine Activity Theory Approach

Routine activities theory (RAT) is traditionally drawn upon to highlight the role of offender motivation, target suitability, and effective guardianship in explaining victimization patterns. While an extensive literature base supports RAT, prior studies have neglected to examine the impact of offender motivation, target suitability, and guardianship on diverse outcomes of violent crimes. The current study extends prior research grounded in RAT by exploring the role of indicators of the central elements highlighted by the theory in understanding the likelihood that an offender will be arrested. As such, this study adds to the growing body of literature on RAT by exploring its relevance to a more diverse set of outcomes. To do this, we draw on the wealth of data on offender, victim, and incident characteristics available in the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS). Results from the analysis offer a moderate to strong level of support for extending RAT to understanding variation in the likelihood that an offender will be arrested. The insights gained from a RAT framework were further discussed in relation to our findings.     

Monetary Costs of Gender and Ethnicity Disaggregated Group-Based Offending

Research on criminal careers has examined distinct longitudinal patterns of offending across unique trajectories of offenders and a recent study has linked the costs of criminal offending imposed by these unique trajectories, with a specific focus on chronic offenders. In this study, we use longitudinal data from the Second Philadelphia Birth Cohort Study to examine the extent to which the monetary costs of crime across distinct trajectories of crime vary across both gender and ethnicity. Results indicate that male adolescent-peaked and low and high-rate chronic offending impose substantial costs, and the average costs imposed on society by one male high-rate chronic offender is greater than 1.5 million. Although female chronic offending is rarer, these female offenders still impose greater than1.5 million. Although female chronic offending is rarer, these female offenders still impose greater than 750,000 in costs on average. African-American chronic-offending costs the most of any racial/ethnic trajectory group at greater than 1.6 million on average for each chronic offender. Hispanic chronic offending on average costs slightly more than1.6 million on average for each chronic offender. Hispanic chronic offending on average costs slightly more than 200,000, and low-rate White offending costs greater than $100,000 on average. Costs also appear to peak at different ages for males and females and for African-Americans, Hispanics, and Whites. Policy implications and study limitations are also discussed.     

From Learning to Labour to Learning to Self-Control: The Paradigmatic Change in Swedish Prison Policy

This article has been written from the position that we fail to understand the character of the changes in prison policy in the last decades if we concentrate too much on the new emphasis on control and security. By making use of Thomas Kuhn's paradigm model, the article argues that it is fertile to see the changes in Swedish prison policy during the last decades as a paradigm shift. Although the new emphasis on control and security is important, it is only one feature in a larger transformation which concerns changing perceptions of the criminal subject, new theoretical understandings, new treatment methods, as well as a new role for the prison in penal policy in general. The article conceptualizes the policy that has developed inside the Swedish Prison and Probation Service during the last decades as the developing of a new paradigm in contrast to the old prison policy paradigm of the welfare state. The article especially discusses the significance of the development of so-called evidence-based knowledge as well as the creation of a Scientific Council inside the Swedish Prison and Probation Service which have led to a re-pathologization of the criminal subject. Other features that make up the new paradigm are the numerous programmes built on cognitive therapy and the emphasis on individual risk assessments. On a general level, the new paradigm has developed during, and is congruent with, the dominance of a neo-liberal regime.     

The Profits of Recognition: A Praxeological Approach to Corporate Crime

This paper offers a methodological intervention into the study and understanding of regulation and compliance with respect to corporate crime. We advocate Pierre Bourdieu’s “praxeological” sociology as the bases for what we hold is an innovative model of regulation and compliance. The praxeological or relational approach offers structural analyses that take seriously the constructivist fixation with meaning, subjectivity, and perception without succumbing to the limitations of an interactionist conception of power. We first show theoretical affinities between the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Louis Althusser in order to highlight their shared concern with subject formation and their respective conceptions of “mis/recognition”. As this provides us with the theoretical basis of a more robust theory of regulation and compliance than is commonly found within the corporate crime literature, we argue that studies of corporate wrongdoing would benefit from rethinking the conceptions of compliance that currently shape corporate crime scholarship. We then demonstrate the benefits of this praxeological approach to regulation and compliance through discussion of the state’s efforts to discipline corporations through criminal law in Canada and the United Kingdom.     

Self-Control and Crime/Deviance: Cognitive vs. Behavioral Measures

Using survey data, various measures of self-control, based respectively on cognitive and behavioral indicators, are compared in their ability to predict eight measures of crime/deviance. The results show that either type of measure produces supportive evidence for the theory, and the behavioral measures provide no better prediction than do the cognitive measures. Unlike cognitive type indicators, and contrary to the implications of the theory, different types of crime-analogous, imprudent behaviors are not highly interrelated, making it difficult to develop reliable behavioral measures. These results suggest that general support for self-control theory would likely not be any greater if all researchers had used behaviorally based measures, as recommended by the authors of the theory. Improving the level of prediction to the point where self-control could claim to be the master variable, as envisioned by its proponents, does not seem to rest on a shift to behaviorally based measures. Instead, improvements in the theory itself, particularly the incorporation of contingencies, appears to offer more promise.