Social Process Theories

Socialization and Crime

- Individual socialization and the interactions people have with various organizations, institutions, and processes of society determine criminality.

- Most people are influenced by:

-- Peer group association

-- Family relationships

-- Educational experiences

-- Authority figures (i.e. teachers, employers, agents of the justice system)

- Dysfunctional and destructive relationships may result in the undertaking of alternative paths of convention (i.e. criminality).

- All people regardless of race, class, or gender, have the potential to become delinquents or criminals.

- The lower-class may have the added burdens of poverty, racism, poor schools, and disrupted family lives.

- These burdens may be counteracted by positive peer relations, a supportive family, and educational success.

- Elements of socialization that contribute to a burgeoning criminal career:

-- Family relations

--- Children are able to resist temptations of the streets if they receive fair discipline, care, and support from parents who provide them with strong, positive role models.

--- Children will find it hard to resist temptations of the streets if they come from:

- single-parent or broken household,

- a home where there is lack of familial love and support.

- a home where a parent suffers from mental impairment.

- a home where there is inconsistent discipline.

- a home where there is poor supervision.

- a home where there is lack of a warm, loving, and supportive parent-child relationship.

- a home where there is child physical and sexual abuse.

- a home where there is a great amount of child neglect.

-- Peer group

--- Peers provide emotional support for teens.

--- Peers have greater influence over decision making than parents when children are in their teens.

--- Children form cliques according to their common interests and activities.

--- Bad company likely to produce antisocial and criminal behavior.

--- Peer pressure can cause teens to commit crimes or other delinquent acts.

--- Peer approval and rejection is a big part of a teenager’s life. Acceptance mean a lot to them at this age: unpopular or unruly kids are snubbed by their peers, and this rejection helps lock these already aggressive kids into a cycle of persistent violence that is likely to continue into adulthood.

--- Troubled youths who are rejected or outcast may become hostile and antisocial, while some may have fewer positive social options and may be drawn to lower-status and deviant peer groups.

--- Peer acceptance help reduce adolescent criminal behavior and drug use.

--- Research shows that adolescents who report inadequate or strained peer relations, and who say they are not popular with the “opposite sex”, are the ones most likely to become delinquent (Agnew & Brezina, 1997).

--- Association between peers and the onset and continuation of criminality may take one of a number of different paths:

- Delinquent friends cause law-abiding youth to “get into trouble”. Kids who fall in with a “bad crowd” are at-risk for delinquency. Maintaining friends with antisocial peers gives higher risk for delinquency.

- Antisocial youths seek out and join with like-minded friends. Deviant peer sustain and amplify delinquent careers. Those who choose aggressive and violent friends are more likely to begin engaging in antisocial behavior themselves and suffer psychological deficits.

- Antisocial friends help youths maintain delinquent careers and obstruct the aging-out process. Non-delinquent friends moderate delinquency. Adulthood may bring close and sustaining ties to conventional friends, marriage, and family, hence, the level of deviant behavior will decline.

- Troubled kids choose delinquent peers out of necessity rather than desire. Their social baggage prevents them from developing associations with conventional peers.

--- Religious attendance and belief help reduce crime (Baier & Wright, 2001; Johnson, Sung, Larson, & Spencer, 2001).

-- School

--- Association to criminality and delinquency has been linked to:

- Poor academic performance

- Lack of educational motivation

- Dropping out of school

- Lack of required academic qualification to secure a job

- School bullying

--- Schools contribute to criminality when they label problem youths and set them apart from conventional society (i.e. streaming and classification of upper class levels and lower class levels)

--- Larger schools are more likely to have a violent incident and report one or more violent incidents to the police than smaller schools (i.e. secondary schools are more likely to have a violent incident than middle, elementary, or combined schools).

--- Urban schools are more likely than suburban and rural schools to experience or report crime to the police.

Social Learning Theories

- Crime is the product of learning the norms, values, and behaviors associated with criminal activity.

- Learning involve actual techniques of crime as well as the psychological aspects of criminality.

- Three prominent forms of social learning theory:

-- Differential Association Theory

--- Edwin H. Sutherland

--- Donald Cressey

--- Crime was a function of the inadequacy of people in the lower-classes.

--- Criminality stemmed neither from individual traits nor from socioeconomic position.

--- Criminality is a learning process that could affect any individual in any culture.

--- Skills and motives conducive to crime are learned as a result of contacts with pro-crime values, attitudes, and definitions and other patterns of criminal behavior.

--- Ideas that prohibit crime:

- Play fair

- Don’t be a bully

- Forgive and forget

- Turn the other cheek

- Evil is always punished

- Honesty is the best policy

--- Ideas that justify crime:

- Drinking is OK

- I don’t get mad I get even

- The end justifies the means

- Don’t let anyone push you around

- People should take drugs if they want to

--- Evaluation of the Differential Association Theory

- Lacks empirical tested evidence to show its principles and concepts.

- Correlation between having deviant friends, holding deviant attitudes, and committing deviant acts support the core notion of this theory.

- Used to explain gender difference in the crime rate. Males generally have a more cavalier attitude toward others and are more interested in their own self-interests, hence more susceptible to the influence of deviant peers.

- Differential association is invalid (according to cultural deviance critique) because it suggests that criminals are people “properly” socialized into a deviant subculture (taught criminals). Rather, a person can embrace criminality because they have been improperly socialized into the normative culture.

- Differential association fails to explain why some youths succumbs to delinquency while others are able to avoid criminal entanglements when living in the same condition.

- Delinquency and criminal acts are assumed to be very rational and systematic.

- Youths who join like-minded peers may not necessarily become criminals committing criminal acts.

- This theory is not limited to the explanation of a single facet of antisocial activity, such as lower-class gang activity.

-- Differential Reinforcement Theory

--- Ronald Akers

--- Robert Burgess

--- Differential reinforcement = direct conditioning

--- Behavior is reinforced by being either rewarded or punished while interacting with others.

--- Punishment: negative reinforcement (i.e. negative stimuli or a loss of positive reward).

--- Criminal or deviant behavior is determined by the degree to which it has been rewarded or punished and the rewards or punishments attached to its alternatives.

--- Behaviors can be modeled through observational learning.

--- The more a behavior is defined as good or at least as justified, rather than as undesirable, the more likely the person engages in it.

--- Groups (i.e. peers) control sources and patterns of reinforcements.

- Influence on behavior comes from those groups which control individuals’ major sources of reinforcement and punishment and expose them to behavioral models and normative definitions.

- Important groups are the ones with which a person is in differential association (i.e. peers, schools, churches, and similar institutions).

- Within the context of these critical groups, deviant behavior can be expected to the extent that it has been differentially reinforced over alternative behavior, and is defined as desirable or justified.

- Once people are introduced into crime, their behavior can be reinforced by being exposed to deviant behavior models, associating with deviant peers, and lacking negative sanctions from parents or peers.

--- Evaluation of the Differential Reinforcement Theory

- According to this theory, not all socialization is positive.

- It accounts for the fact that negative social reinforcements and experiences can produce criminal results.

- Criminal knowledge is gained through experience.

- Through experience of different outcomes, potential criminals decide which criminal acts will be profitable and which are dangerous and should be avoided.

- Crimes are committed by the use of rational choices (i.e. balancing cost/benefits).

-- Neutralization Theory

--- David Matza

--- Gresham Sykes

--- Views process of becoming a criminal as a learning experience in which potential delinquents and criminals master techniques that enable them to counterbalance or neutralize conventional values and drift back and forth between illegitimate and conventional behavior.

--- Subterranean values:

- Morally tinged influences that have become entrenched in the culture but are publicly condemned.

- Exist side-by-side with conventional values and while condemned in public may be admired or practiced in private.

- i.e. pornography, extreme alcoholism, illegal gambling.

--- Not every criminals are involved in criminality all the time. They also attend school, family functions, and religious services.

--- Criminals’ behavior can be conceived as falling along a continuum between total freedom and total restraint: the process called drift (movement from from one extreme of behavior to another, resulting in behavior that is sometimes unconventional, free, or deviant and at other times constrained and sober).

--- Criminality is the result of the neutralization of accepted social values through the learning of a standard set of techniques that allow people to counteract the moral dilemmas posed by illegal behavior.

--- Observations that influenced the Neutralization theory:

- Criminals sometimes voice a sense of guilt over their illegal acts.

-- If a stable criminal value system existed in opposition to generally held values and rules, it would be unlikely that criminals would exhibit any remorse for their acts, other than regret at being apprehended.

- Offenders frequently respect and admire honest, law-abiding people.

-- Really honest people are often revered; and if for some reason such people are accused of misbehavior, the criminal is quick to defend their integrity.

- Criminals draw a line between those whom they can victimize and those whom they cannot.

-- Members of similar ethnic groups, churches, or neighborhoods are often off limits. This implies that criminals are aware of the wrongfulness of their acts.

- Criminals are not immune to the demands of conformity.

-- Most criminals frequently participate in many of the same social functions as law-abiding people.

--- Techniques of neutralization

--- Deny responsibility:

(i) Young offenders sometimes claim their unlawful acts were simply not their fault, rather it was “beyond their control” or were “accidents”.

--- Deny injury:

(i) By denying wrongful act, criminals are able to neutralize illegal behavior (i.e. stealing is viewed as borrowing).

(ii) Claiming that behavior is merely a prank, helping affirm the offender’s perception that crime can be socially acceptable.

--- Deny victim:

(i) Neutralizing a wrongdoing by maintaining that the victim of crime “had it coming” (i.e. homosexuals, disliked teacher or neighbor may be beaten up because their behavior is considered offensive).

(ii) Ignoring the rights of an absent or unknown victim (i.e. stealing from the unseen owner of a departmental store).

--- Condemn condemners:

(i) Offender views the world as a corrupt place with a dog-eat-dog code. Because police and judge are on the take, teachers show favoritism, and parents take out their frustrations on their kids, it is ironic and unfair for these authorities to condemn his or her misconduct.

(ii) Shifting the blame to others and repress the feeling that their own acts are wrong.

--- Appeal to higher loyalties:

(i) Novice criminals often argue that they are caught in the dilemma of being loyal to their own peer group while at the same time attempting to abide by the rules of the larger society.

(ii) The needs of the group takes higher priority over the rules of society because the demands of the former are immediate and localized.

--- Evaluating Neutralization Theory

- Inconclusive verification of neutralization theory.

- Is there really a need for law violators to neutralize moral constraints?

- If criminals hold values in opposition to accepted social norms, then there is really no need to neutralize.

- Mixed empirical evidence so far.

- Weight of evidence is that (a) adolescents generally disapprove of deviant behaviors such violence and (b) neutralizations do in fact enable youths to engage in socially disproved of behavior.

- Can account for aging-out process: Youth can forgo criminal behavior as adults because they never really rejected the morality of normative society.

- Can help explain the behavior of occasional or non-chronic delinquent, who is able to successfully age out of crime.

- People who remain criminals as adults may be using newly learned techniques to neutralize the wrongfulness of their actions and avoid guilt (i.e. scapegoating etc).

- Learning theory fails to account for the origin of criminal definitions.

- Learning theory fails to adequately explain spontaneous and wanton acts of violence and damage and other expressive crimes that appear to have little utility or purpose (i.e. Differential association can easily explain shoplifting, but is it possible that a random shooting is caused by excessive deviant definitions?).

- Little evidence exists substantiating that people learn the techniques that enable them to become criminals before they actually commit criminal acts.

- Not limited to the explanation of a single-facet of antisocial activity like the social structure theories.

Social Control Theories

- All people have the potential to violate the law and that modern society presents many opportunities for illegal activity.

- People obey the law because behavior and passions are being controlled by internal and external forces.

- Self-control is manifested through a strong moral sense, which renders them incapable of hurting others and violating social norms.

- Other people develop a commitment to conformity, which is adhered to because there is a real, present, and logical reason to obey the rules of society.

- People’s behavior, including criminal activity, is controlled by their attachment and commitment to conventional institutions, individuals, and processes. If that commitment is absent, they are free to violate the law and engage in deviant behavior.

- Self-concept and crime:

-- Early theory: Low self-control was a product of weak self-concept and poor self-esteem.

-- Albert Reiss (1951): Delinquents had weak egos and lacked the self-control to produce conforming behavior.

-- Scott Briar and Irving Piliavin: Youths who believe criminal activity will damage their self-image and their relationships with others will be most likely to conform to social rules. Those less concerned about their social standing are free to violate the law.

-- Walter Reckless (1967): A strong self-image insulates a youth from the pressures and pulls of criminogenic influences in the environment.

-- Howard Kaplan (1978, 1980): Youths with poor self-concepts are the ones most likely to engage in delinquent behavior; successful participation in criminality actually helps raise their self-esteem.

--- Youths conform to social rules of society, seek membership in normative groups, and perform conventional tasks as long as their efforts pay off in positive, esteem-enhancing feedback.

--- Threats, rebukes, ridicules, or belittlement may be viewed and experienced as “self-rejections”, and in turn, these youths may turn to deviant groups made up of similar like-minded youths to meet their need for self-esteem.

--- Deviant friends give them positive feedback and support. To further enhance their identity, these youths may engage in deviant behaviors.

--- Those who maintain both the lowest self-image and the greatest need for approval are the ones most likely to seek self-enhancement by engaging in criminal activities.

--- Perceptions of relative deprivation may produce negative self-feelings, which motivate antisocial behaviors.

-- Travis Hirschi (1969): Social Bond Theory 

--- READ http://home.comcast.net/~ddemelo/crime/hirschi.html 

--- Associates the onset of criminality to the weakening of the ties that bind people to society.

--- All individuals are potential law violators, but they are kept under control because they fear that illegal behavior will damage their relationship with friends, parents, neighbors, teachers, and employers.

--- Without these social ties or bonds, a person is free to commit any criminal acts.

--- People vary in how they respond to conventional social rules and values.

--- People with weak bonds in society may fall prey to criminogenic behavior patterns.

--- The social bond a person maintains with society is divided into 4 main elements:

(a) Attachment

- A person’s sensitivity to and interest in others.

- Without a sense of attachment, a person becomes a psychopath and loses the ability to relate coherently to the world.

- Parents, schools, and peers are important social institutions a person should maintain ties.

(b) Commitment

- Involves time, energy, and effort expended in conventional lines of action (i.e. saving $ for future)

- If people build strong commitment to conventional society, they will be less likely to engage in acts that will jeopardize their hard-won position.

- Lack of commitment to conventional values may foreshadow a condition in which risk-taking behavior, such as crime, becomes a reasonable behavior alternative.

(c) Involvement

- Involvement in conventional activities leaves little time for illegal behavior.

- This insulates people from the potential lure of criminal behavior.

(d) Belief

- People who live in the same social setting often share common moral beliefs.

- They may adhere to such values as sharing, sensitivity to the rights of others, admiration for the legal code.

- If beliefs are weakened, individuals are more likely to participate in antisocial or legal acts.

- Interrelationship of social bond elements controls subsequent behavior.

- A person who rejects such social relationships is more likely to lack commitment to conventional goals.

- People who are highly committed to conventional acts and beliefs are more likely to be involved in conventional activities.

--- Testing Social Bond Theory

- Youths who were strongly attached to their parents were less likely to commit criminal acts.

- Commitment to conventional values (i.e. striving to get good education; refusing to drink alcohol and drive at the same time), was indicative of conventional behavior.

- Youths involved in unconventional behavior (i.e. smoking and drinking), were more delinquency prone.

- Youths who maintained weak and distant relationships with people tended toward delinquency.

- Those who shunned unconventional acts were attached to their peers.

- Delinquents and non-delinquents shared similar beliefs about society.

--- Criticisms of the Social Bond Theory

- Do delinquents really have strained relations with family and peers?

- Were delinquents really influenced by close relationships with deviant peers and family members?

- Delinquents may not be “lone wolves” whose only personal relationships are exploitive; their friendship patterns seem quite close to those of conventional youth.

- Not all elements of the bond are equal in terms of how youths prioritize them according to how they would like to get involved and committed with each one of them.

- Not all social attachment is beneficial: Deviant attachments may help motivate antisocial behavior.

- Can this theory explain all modes of criminality or is it restricted to particular groups or forms of criminality? (i.e. gender youth groups; minor delinquency).

- Some bonds tend to change over time (i.e. weak bonds to parents lead to delinquency at some point; strong bonds to peers lead to delinquency at some point).

- Agnew (1985) argued that Hirschi has miscalculated the direction of the relationship between criminality and a weakened social bond. Hirschi’s claim that a weakened bond leads to delinquency, but Agnew suggests that the chain of events may flow in the opposite direction (i.e. kids who violate the law may find that their bonds with their parents, schools, and society eventually becomes weak and attenuated).

Social Reaction Theory

- Also known as labeling theory.

- Explains how criminal careers form based on destructive social interactions and encounters.

- This theory’s roots are found in the symbolic interaction theory.

- People communicate via symbols (i.e. signs, gestures, words, or images) that stand for or represent something else.

- People interpret symbolic gestures from others and incorporate them in their self-image.

- How reality is viewed based on the content of the messages and situations encountered.

- No objective reality; everything is based on how one interprets.

- Interpretation changes over time, so do meanings and symbols.

- It’s all about labels:

-- Labels represent behavior and attitude characteristics; they define not just one trait but the whole person.

-- Some labels can improve self-image and social standing, while others stigmatize and reduce self-image.

-- Labels may be a function of rumors, innuendo, or unfounded suspicion.

-- The impact of labels can be immense.

-- A status can be a form of label, and it can become how the person is perceived by society based on his or her label/status.

-- When someone is labelled a criminal, ex-con, or drug addict, they may find their eligibility for employment severely restricted. The labelled person may be subjected to official sanctions ranging from a mild reprimand to incarceration.

-- Depending on the visibility of the label and the manner and severity with which it is applied, a person will have an increasing commitment to a deviant career.

-- Labelled people may find themselves turning to others similarly stigmatized for support and companionship as well as identity.

- Labeling theorists blame criminal career formation on the social agencies originally designed for its control:

-- Social agencies (i.e. police, courts, and correctional agencies) produce stigma that is so harmful to the very people they are trying to help, treat, or correct.

-- Social agencies actually bestow labels on criminals, which help maintain and amplify criminal behavior, rather than reduce deviant behavior.

- Labeling Theory

-- Crime and deviance are defined by the social audience’s reaction to people and their behavior and the subsequent effects of that reaction. They are not defined by the moral content of the illegal act itself.

-- Crimes (i.e. rape, murder, assault) are labelled as evil or bad because people label them as such.

-- The difference between an excusable act and a criminal one is often a matter of legal definition, which changes from place to place and time to time.

-- Howard Becker (1963) refers to people who create rules as moral entrepreneurs.

-- Labeling theorists view crime as a subjective concept whose definition is totally dependent on the viewing audience.

-- Crime is defined by those in power, the shape of the criminal law is defined by the values of those who rule and not by an objective standard or moral conduct.

- Differential Enforcement

-- The law is differentially applied, benefiting those who hold economic and social power and penalizing the powerless.

-- Probability of being brought under the control of legal authority is a function of a person’s race, wealth, gender, and social standing (i.e. police officers are more likely to formally arrest males, minority group members, and those in the lower class and to use their discretionary powers to give beneficial treatment to more favored groups).

-- The content of the law reflects power relationships in society:

--- White-collar crimes (economic crimes usually committed by members of the upper-class) are most often punished by a relatively small fine and rarely result in a prison sentence.

--- “Street crimes” (typically committed by those of the lower-classes) such as burglary or car theft, are often punished by long prison sentences.

-- Regardless of why people commit crime, the less personal power and resources a person has, the greater the chance he or she will become labelled.

-- Race, class, and ethnic differences between those in power and those who are not influence the likelihood of labelling.

-- Not all labelled people have chosen to engage in label-producing activities, such as crime.

-- Some negative labels are bestowed on people for behaviors over which they have little control.

-- The probability of being labelled may depend on how visible that person is in the community, the tolerance of the community for unusual behavior, and the person’s own power to combat labels.

-- Labels create stigma and influence one’s self-image.

-- Differential social control:

--- The process of labelling may produce a re-evaluation of the self, which reflects actual or perceived appraisals made by others (i.e. people takes on the roles and attitudes that reflect how others view them).

--- Informal and institutional social control processes enhance the effect of this reflective role taking.

-- When people are labelled as deviant, they may join up with other similarly outcast/deviant groups who facilitate their behavior.

-- Membership in a deviant subculture often involves conforming to group norms that conflict with those of conventional society.

-- Retrospective Reading:

--- Labels tend to redefine the whole person (i.e. a labelled ex-convict may create in people’s imaginations a whole series of behavior descriptions like tough, mean, dangerous, aggressive, dishonest, sneaky). People will then begin to react to the label description and what it signifies instead of reacting to the actual behavior of the person who bears it.

--- A process in which the past of the labelled person is reviewed and reevaluated to fit his or her current status.

-- Dramatization of Evil:

--- Labels become the basis of personal identity. As the negative feedback of law enforcement agencies, parents, friends, teachers, and other figures amplifies the force of the original label, stigmatized offenders may begin to re-evaluate their own identities.

- Deviance

-- Primary deviance:

--- Involves norm violations or crimes that have very little influence on the actor and can be quickly forgotten.

Example: A college student takes a “five-finger discount” at the campus bookstore. He successfully steals a textbook, uses it to get an A in a course, goes on to graduate, is admitted into law school, and later becomes a famous judge. Because his shoplifting goes unnoticed, it is a relatively unimportant event that has little bearing on his future life.

-- Secondary deviance:

--- Occurs when a deviant event comes to the attention of significant others or social control agents who apply a negative label.

--- The newly labelled offender than re-organizes his or her behavior and personality around the consequences of the deviant act.

--- Involves re-socialization into a deviant role.

--- Produces a deviance amplification effect.

Example: Shoplifting student is caught by security guard and expelled from college. With his law school dreams dashed and his future cloudy, his options are limited; people who know him says he “lacks character”, and he begins to share their opinion. He eventually becomes a drug dealer and winds up in prison.

- Who Gets Labelled?

-- The poor

-- The lower-class

-- The powerless

-- The minorities

-- The deviants

- The Effects of Labelling

-- Negative labels actually have a dramatic influence on self-image and subsequent behavior.

-- Family interaction can influence the labelling process (i.e. children negatively labelled by their parents routinely suffer a variety of problems, including antisocial behavior and school failure).

-- Labelling causes parents to become alienated from their child.

-- Negative labels reduce a child’s self-image and increase delinquency. --- READ Bartusch and Matsueda’s (1996)  “Gender, Reflected Appraisals, and Labelling: A Cross-Group Test of an Interactionist Theory of Delinquency”.

-- Labelling plays an important role in persistent offending.

-- A label triggers exclusionary processes that limit conventional opportunities, such as educational attainment and employment.

- Evaluating Labelling Theory

-- Some conditions have to exist before the person is labelled.

-- Social Reaction Theory fails to explain differences in crime rates; if crime is a function of stigma and labels, why are crime rates higher in some areas at particular times of the year?

-- Labelling theory ignores the onset of deviant behavior and does not deal with the reasons delinquents and criminals decides to forgo a deviant career.

-- Little evidence that stigma produces crime.

-- Growing evidence that the onset of criminal careers occurs early in life and that those who go on to a “life of crime” are burdened with so many social, physical, and psychological problems that negative labelling may be a relatively insignificant event.

-- Labelling perspective identifies the role played by social control agents in the process of crime causation. Criminal behavior cannot be fully comprehended if agencies and individuals empowered to control and treat it are neglected.

-- Labelling theory recognizes that criminality is not a disease or pathological behavior. It focuses attention on the social interactions and reactions that shape individuals and their behavior.

-- Labelling theory distinguishes between criminal acts (primary deviance) and criminal careers (secondary deviance) and shows that these concepts must be interpreted and treated differently.

-- Labelling theory focuses on interaction as well as the situations surrounding the crime.

-- Labelling theory recognizes that crime is often the result of complex interactions and processes.

-- Labels may expedite crime because they guide the actions of all parties involved in these criminal interactions.

-- Labelling process is universal, which supports the impact of stigma on crime.

Public Policy Implications of Social Process Theory

- If people become criminal by learning definitions and attitudes toward criminality, advocates of the social learning approach argue that they can “unlearn” them by being exposed to definitions toward conventional behavior.

- Teach offenders about the harmfulness of drugs, to forgo delinquent behavior, and to stay in school.

- Increase people’s commitment to conventional lines of action.

- Strengthening bonds early in life before the onset of criminality.

- Strengthening bonds between the parents and the child.

- Repair bonds that have been broken and frayed.

- Caution against too much interventions (i.e. rehabilitation), because the more institutions try to “help” people, the more these people will be stigmatized and labelled.

- Diversion programs designed to remove both juvenile and adult offenders from the normal channels of criminal justice process by placing them in programs designed for rehabilitation.

- Offer counseling, vocational, education, and family services.

- Rather than face the stigma of a formal trial, an offender is asked to either pay back the victim of the crime for any loss incurred or do some useful work in the community in lieu of receiving a court-ordered sentence.

References

Agnew, R. (1985). Social control theory and delinquency: A longitudinal test. Criminology, 23, 47-61.

Agnew, R., and Brezina, T. (1997). Relational problems with peers, gender, and delinquency. Youth and Society, 29, 84-111.

Baier, C., and Wright, B. (2001). If you love me, keep my commandments: A meta-analysis of the effect of religion on crime. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 38, 3-21.

Bartusch, D.J., and Matsueda, R.L. (1996). Gender, reflected appraisals, and labelling: A cross-group test of an Interactionist theory of delinquency. Social Forces, 75, 145-176.

Becker, H. (1963). Outsiders, Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Macmillan, p.9.

Briar and Piliavin. Delinquency: Situational Inducements and Commitment to Conformity.

Hirschi, T. (1969). Causes of Delinquency. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Johnson, B., Sung, J.J., Larson, D., and Spencer, D.L. (2001). Does adolescent religious commitment matter? A re-examination of the effects of religiosity on delinquency. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 38, 22-44.

Kaplan, H. (1978). Self-Attitudes and deviant response. Social Forces, 54, 788-801.

Kaplan, H. (1980). Deviant Behavior in Defense of Self. New York: Academic Press.

Reckless, W. (1967). The Crime Problem. New York: Appleton-Century-Croft, pp. 469-483

Reiss, A. (1951). Delinquency as the failure of personal and social controls. American Sociological Review, 16, 196-207.