Ch.6 - Chriss, Social Control

1
Chapter 6

• Case Studies in Informal Control

2
Social Disorganization and Social Control

• Early control theorist at University of Chicago
  was Albert J. Reiss
• Studied factors related to juvenile recidivism
• Importance of family control ability of the
  family to meet the needs of its members
• Juvenile recidivism higher with
• Low family economic status
• Weak or conflicting marital relations
• Parenting styles that are either lax or punitive
• Institutional or foster care experience

3
Natural Right and Natural Law

• Hobbes in the original state of nature, humans
  individualistic and brutish
• War of all against all if left unconstrained
• Condition of natural right
• With increase in rational faculty, humans realize
  that unchecked self-gratifications are
  self-defeating
• Advent of natural law to replace natural right
• Enter a social contract, allowing state to
  intervene as external control agent

4
Hirschis Control Theory

• Travis Hirschi published Causes of Delinquency
  in 1969
• Conducted research on juveniles, and developed
  theory out of this research
• Major concept is the social bond
• The more strongly persons are enmeshed in group
  relations, the less likely they are to deviate
• Persons are bad and will deviate unless external
  obstacles (controls) are placed in their way

5
Hirschis Control Theory

• Four dimensions of the social bond
• Attachment internalization of the norms of
  conventional society, and respect toward these
  authority figures/role models
• Belief belief in the goodness or justness of
  the system of control and its agents
• Commitment rational calculation concerning how
  much to invest in conventional activities
• Involvement actual time spent in conventional
  activities

6
The Move to Self-Control

• Gottfredson and Hirschi published A General
  Theory of Crime in 1990
• Argued that the social bond is not as important
  as self-control
• Self-control is developed early in life and is
  relatively impervious to change later
• Unlike social bonds which can fluctuate over
  time, self-control is relatively stable
• Self-control explains not only criminal
  offending, but deviance more generally

7
The Move to Self-Control

• Characteristics of persons with low self-control
• Impulsive and seek immediate gratification
• Prefer acts that are exciting, risky, or
  thrilling
• Many such crimes provide few if any long-term
  benefits
• Tend to be self-centered, indifferent, or
  insensitive to the suffering of others
• Bad parenting may be the single biggest
  contributor to low self-control

8
Social Capital

• Benefits that accrue to individuals and to
  society as a result of social ties
• Collective efficacy the ability of communities
  to get things done
• High levels of social trust
• Hence high levels of social capital
• Facilitates greater informal control
• Putnam bowling alone

9
Housing Segregation and White Flight

• Everyday life freedom to associate or not
  associate with whomever one wants (informal
  controls and sanctions)
• Choices at individual level may show patterns of
  discrimination/segregation at collective level
• Jim Crow laws in American south led to Great
  Migration of African-Americans to northern
  destinations between 1940 and 1970
• White flight during 1950s and 1960s
• Rise of urban ghettos
• Government attempts to address housing and other
  forms of segregation (legal control)

10
Linguistic Profiling

1. De facto housing segregation based upon
   linguistic cues
2. A form of informal control
3. Most discrimination targeted at speakers of Black
   English Vernacular (BEV)
4. Also speakers of Black Accented English
5. Compared against speakers of White Middle-class
   English
6. Note results (pp. 148-149)

11
Racial-Spatial Divide

• De facto discrimination against racial and ethnic
  minorities persistent even with liberal laws
  seeking to end it
• Peterson and Krivo argue the existence of a
  racial-spatial divide
• The ability to get up and move to safer
  neighborhoods with better schools not equally
  distributed
• Strong correlation between housing segregation
  and higher levels of violent crime among racial
  minorities
• Must halt white privilege through new, massive
  wealth redistribution schemes

12
Code of the Street

1. A concept developed by Elijah Anderson (Yale
   University) through ethnographic research.
2. Circumstances of life among the ghetto poor
   spawns an oppositional culture.
3. Code of the street - informal street justice in
   the inner-city

13
Code of the Street

• Rules of the code include
• Proper comportment
• Ways to respond if challenged
• Regulating use of violence
• Consequences for violating the rules
• Ignorance of the code is no defense
• Respect being granted deference, being treated
  right.
• Status as a zero-sum game

14
Youth and Morality

1. Pressing project of any society is teaching
   children right from wrong (sense of morality)
2. Earlier times punishments against wayward youth
   were harsh and punitive (Puritans of 17th
   century)
3. Have we now gone too soft on children? (spare
   the rod, spoil the child)
4. Christian Smith studied contemporary American
   youth emerging adulthood (18 23 years of age)
5. Certain trends make current crop of emerging
   adults unique in world history (see factors, pp.
   158-159)

15
Youth and Morality

• Their parents were of the baby boom, the 1960s
  and 1970s, who created a New Morality, largely
  anti-establishment
• American Bohemianism
• Romanticism spontaneity and originality,
  rejection of tradition or established ways (too
  stodgy, stuffy)
• Emotionalism feelings must be honored, and
  hiding feelings is antithetical to authenticity
• Monasticism seeking out like-minded persons,
  rebuffing the stuffed shirts who would spoil
  their scene
• Substance pursuit of unconventional lifestyles,
  pushing human perception to its limits

16
Youth and Morality

• Contemporary emerging adults reject hierarchy and
  control
• Let them do their own thing
• Perhaps also effect of political correctness (not
  passing judgment)
• Religion saw the world in black and white (good
  and evil) modern approach is to tolerate shades
  of gray and endless discussions/analysis of the
  situation
• Traditional morality seen as largely arbitrary
  and capricious
• We make our own morality, on a case by case basis
• Whatever makes you happy
• But also highly oriented toward materialism
• Having the latest technological games and gadgets
• Consumerist redefinition of everything, including
  education