Friday, May 16, 2008

Another Friday

Spent part of the drive yesterday rolling the notes I read previously on social control theory around in my head to find ways to synthesize it. Basically, Gottfredson & Hirschi (1990) argue that self control is the one & only predictor of criminal behavior; they say self control control is a product of interactions with parents during childhood, it becomes stable and unchanging by age 7, and this process is consistent across race and gender. Research since then has shown that G&H were only partially correct; self control is a strong predictor of involvement in criminal behavior, but it is not stable (parenting practices can modify it in adolescence; other relationships effect it throughout the life course), it also isn't the only component that predicts criminal behavior, as the presence of self-control variables in models doesn't completely mediate the relationship delinquency and other measures. Also, some suggest that maybe parenting isn't as important to the development of self control as G&H argue; for instance, persons born with functional deficits like ADHD obviously have issues with impulse control, and so there is likely a biological component at work here as well.

If only I could remember the citations for some of that off the top of my head.

Right now, I am trying to finish getting my notes organized. The summer "officially" starts Monday, so I have to go in and take care of a bunch of paperwork and get ready for a grant meeting on Tuesday morning. But, if I get these journal notes organized by then, it won't be too much to pull relevant material from my course syllabi to supplement them (there's already a lot of overlap, obviously) and then, well, we'll see.

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