Theories Of Social Control Theory

Immigrants and Social Control Theory

For years, society has attempted to come up with reasons as to why immigrants are involved in criminal activity at a higher rate than native-born Americans. Some point to the fact that immigrants tend to face acculturation and assimilation problems while the majority of native-born Americans do not. Some even speculate it is because immigrants tend to establish themselves in disorganized neighborhoods that are characterized by cultural, social or biological differences which are all often associated with crime. This relationship between immigrants and crime has been in debate for over 100 years and continues to be a controversial issue.

During the 19th century, rapid population was brought on by the migration

This is where the social theory comes in to play and approaches this relationship in a different way. Developed in 1969 by Travis Hirschi, social control theory attempts to answer the ultimate question of why we all do not commit crimes. Social control theories are theories of socialization in which they consider the extent to which individuals learn certain habits, attitudes and perspectives of a society. Hirschi suggests that individuals who have a strong and flexible bond to society will be far less likely to engage in criminal activities or delinquent behaviors, whereas those who have weak bonds will. In other words, the health of a group is determined by how well all the members of that group conform to the group’s norms. Sociologist Emile Durkheim explains it best in his example of a "society of saints," where although each saint was law-abiding, there would still be group norms that would separate the better saints from the less devoted (Durkheim,

One area would be the categories used to group certain immigrants. These narrow racial and ethnic categories used, conceal important subgroup differences which make comparisons in different studies very difficult and might show an increase in immigrant criminal activity. For example, Hispanic immigrants may be grouped together in one study, but treated separately in another study as Cubans, Puerto Ricans or Mexicans. Whichever way you look at it, many researchers have concluded that immigrants are not involved in criminal activity at a higher rate than native-born Americans as once thought which will be discussed