CRIMINOLOGYmore delinquency by virtue of their social-class
standing. Consequently, upper-class girls will be
more controlled than their lower-class counter-
parts, but their brothers will have minor delin-
quency rates resembling those of lower-class boys.
SOCIETY’S ATTEMPT TO CONTROL
CRIMEWhile the theories discussed above focus on the
causes of crime, they are also important for de-
scribing how social systems control crime. Socie-
ties attempt to control the behavior of people
living within their borders with a combination of
formal and informal systems of control. Social
disorganization theory and anomie theory are ex-
amples of how crime is produced when normative
control breaks down. Differential association and
subcultural explanations describe how informal
social control is subverted by socialization that
supports criminal behavior rather than compliant
behavior. Control theories focus specifically on
how weak systems of informal social control fail.
The obvious exception to this last statement is that
portion of control theories that are also deter-
rence theory. Deterrence theory does consider
informal systems of control, but an important part
of this thesis is aimed at explaining how formal
systems, or the criminal justice system in western
societies, attempt to control criminal behavior.
Most criminologists believe that informal systems
of control are considerably more efficient than
formal systems. This makes sense if one remem-
bers that police cannot regulate us as much as we
ourselves can when we have internalized conven-
tional norms, and similarly, police cannot watch
our behavior nearly as much as our families, friends,
teachers, and neighbors can. The criminal justice
system then is reduced to supporting informal
systems of control (thus the interest in block-watch
programs by police departments), engaging in
community policing and patrol patterns that dis-
courage crime, or reacting after violations have
occurred.
CONCLUSIONCriminologists are interested in answering ques-
tions about how crime should be defined, why
crime occurs, and how societies seek to control
crime. The history of modern criminology, which
can be traced to the early nineteenth century, has
not produced definitive answers to these ques-
tions. To some students that is a source of frustra-
tion. To many of us the resulting ambiguity is the
source of continuing interesting debate. More
importantly, the disagreement among criminologists
captures the complexity of social life. Oversimpli-
fication to achieve artificial closure on these de-
bates will not produce quality answers to these
questions, nor will it, to the consternation of some
politicians, lead to workable solutions to crime
problems. Most criminologists recognize that the
complex debates about the answers to these three
seemingly simple questions will ultimately be a
more productive route to understanding crime
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