Travis Hirschi

Age and the Explanation of Crime

One of the few facts agreed on in criminology is the age distribution of crime. This fact has been used to criticize social theories of crime causation, to provide the foundation for other theories, to justify recent emphases on career criminals, and to support claims of superiority for longitudinal designs in criminological research. In the present paper, we argue that the age distribution of crime is sufficiently invariant over a broad range of social conditions that these uses of the age distribution are not justified by available evidence.

Intelligence and delinquency: a revisionist review.

Recent research on intelligence and delinquency suggests that (1) the relation is at least as strong as the relation of either class or race to official delinquency; (2) the relation is stronger than the relation of either class or race to self-reported delinquency. In an analysis of the history of the research on the IQ-delinquency relation, we trace the developments leading to the current textbook position that IQ is not an important factor in delinquency. This position, which came into vogue about forty years ago and is still held by many sociologists, has its roots in: (1) a medical to sociological paradigm shift in this century; (2) the failure of subsequent research to substantiate the early exorbitant claims that low IQ was a necessary and sufficient condition for illegal behavior; (3) early negative reviews of research on this question by Sutherland and others; (4) reservations about the validity of the measurement of both IQ and delinquency; (5) erroneous interpretation of research findings; (6) speculation regarding factors which might account for the relation. It is noted that many currently prominent sociological theories of delinquency implicitly or explicitly use IQ as a crucial theoretical element. We show that IQ has an effect on delinquency independent of class and race, and we argue that this effect is mediated through a host of school variables. (abstract Adapted from Source: American Sociological Review, 1977. Copyright

Correlates of Delinquency: The Illusion of Discrepancy between Self-Report and Official Measures.

This paper reviews the research literature concerning the extent to which studies of delinquency that use official records produce results compatible with studies of delinquency that use self-reports of adolescents. Particular attention is given to sex, race, and social class as correlates of delinquency. The notion that official and self-report methods produce discrepant results with respect to sex, race, and class is largely illusory. In reaching conclusions of discrepancy several techniques have been used in the literature; the most general is the assumption that self-reports and official data tap the same domain of behavior. When the domain limitations of self-reports are recognized (and other illusory techniques are abandoned), the conclusion of general consistency between self-reports and official correlates for sex, race, and class emerges. This consistency and other evidence from victimization surveys, studies of the reliability and validity of self-reports, and studies of biases in criminal justice processing, suggest that both official data and self-reports provide valid indicators of the demographic characteristics of offenders, within the domain of behavior effectively tapped by each method. (abstract Adapted from Source: American Sociological Review, 1979. Copyright

Hellfire and Delinquency

Religious training is assumed to prevent delinquency by promoting the development of moral values, acceptance of conventional authority, and belief in the existence of supernatural sanctions. The relations between church attendance and these presumed consequences are examined. Children who attend church are no more likely than non-attenders to accept ethical principles; they are only slightly more likely than non-attenders to respect conventional authority; they are much more likely to believe in the literal existence of the Devil and a life after death. Those variables affected by church attendance, however, are unrelated to the commission of delinquent acts, while those variables strongly related to delinquency are unaffected by church attendance. The lack of a relation between church attendance and delinquency is thus “explained.”

Separate and Unequal Is Better

Some argue that the assumptions of strain, control, and differential association theories of delinquency are fundamentally incompatible (Hirschi, 1969; Kornhauser, 1978), while others deny that they are necessarily incompatible and suggest the possibility of a compromise theory satisfactory to all concerned. For sheer reasonableness, the integrationist approach would seem to have much to commend it: Why should we continue to squabble over petty differences when, with a little concession here and a minor modification there, the larger truth we all love so well would be better served?’ As a matter of fact, however, integration turns out to be more difficult than this question suggests. When Elliott, Ageton, and Canter (1979) actually face the Solomonic task of resolving the conflicting claims of the three perspectives, they find themselves compelled to agree that it cannot be done. Their solution is to use the terms and ignore the claims of control theory. This allows them to divide the child in two, giving the larger half to differential association and the remainder to strain theory. Since it seems late to be inquiring after the child’s health, it may be more useful here to look briefly at the mediating devices available to those who would resolve the conflicts among these traditional perspectives. For all their popular appeal, the repeated failure of integrationist approaches suggests that there are inherent difficulties that preclude attainment of their avowed goal.

Rethinking the Juvenile Justice System

Crime is the product of the confluence of individuals low on self-control and appropriate opportunities. The likelihood of crime varies continuously with age, but the meaning of criminal acts does not depend on the age of the offender. Distinctions based on age are thus arbitrary, and probably cause more trouble than they are worth. Special treatment of juveniles is based on an erroneous image of developmental sequences, and misrepresents differences between juvenile and adult crime. We argue that one justice system would be better than two, and that of the models currently available, the juvenile system seems preferable to the adult.

Substantive Positivism and the Idea of Crime

Efforts to construct theories of crime consistent with a priori principles typically prove unsatisfactory. Awareness of this fact led the early positivists to reject choice theories in favor of discipline-specific theories tested by examination of correlations among directly measurable variables. Today, disciplinary theories of crime rely more on a priori principles than those theories they were designed to replace. This article critiques these principles and contrasts them with principles derived from a substantive theory of crime based on the idea of restraint. The contrast between positivistic and restraint theories is illustrated by comparing their positions on the following issues: (1) whether to begin with the presuppositions of one or another of the established disciplines; (2) whether to assume that the causes of a phenomenon require that it occur; (3) whether to assume that the characteristics of acts or events are relevant to or implicated in their causation; (4) whether behaviorally different acts and events may be homogeneous with respect to causation; and (5) whether causes or explanations common to all acts or events must enter the explanation of particular acts or events. These questions are examined in light of their consequences for criminological theory and research. In all cases, restraint or choice theory is more likely to produce conclusions consistent with the evidence.

The Criminal Career Perspective as an Explanation of Crime and a Guide to Crime Control Policy The View from General Theories of Crime

Students of criminal careers seek distinct longitudinal sequences of offenses committed by individual offenders. Their approach is explicitly theory free: It assumes that meaningfully different careers may be identified by close examination of the criminal activity of individuals over extended periods of time. They first locate in justice system records a set of careers defined by such parameters as length, trajectory, and specialization in particular crimes. Once the various types have been shown to be sufficiently abundant—explanation, prediction, and policy are expected automatically to follow. By some standards, the criminal career perspective has been successful. It has been assimilated by the life-course perspective and has generated a large body of research. Our alternative approach takes theoretically based research as its guide to explanation of crime and crime prevention policy. In particular, it focuses on the implications for theory and policy of the versatility of offenders, the relative stability of their tendency to offend, and the general invariance of the age effect on crime. On all counts, the evidence sides with general theory and its advocacy of research and crime prevention outside the criminal justice system.

Book Reviews : Taboos in Criminology, Edward Sagarin, ed. Pp. 149. Beverly Hills, Calif., Sage, 1980

Let me continue my criticism by suggesting that the authors’ &dquo;decisional&dquo; apparatus is finally perhaps a bit overblown. After summarizing all the research, the &dquo;factor&dquo; that turns out to influence the &dquo;decision alternative&dquo; to call the police, to arrest, to be required to post bail, to be sentenced to prison, and to serve a lengthy prison term is the seriousness of the crime. The secondary factor is the seriousness of the offender’s prior criminal record, and the tertiary factor is whether or not the criminal

Review essay/confronting liberals on confronting crime

Elliott Currie, Confronting Crime: An American Challenge New York: Pantheon Books, 1985, viii + 326 pp.