Travis Hirschi's Theory Essay Example

Travis Hirschi's theory has dominated the world in the last few decades. His impact on contemporary society is undiminished and will last for years. In his career, Hirschi's rationale has developed significantly, where he has proposed two interrelated but eventually competing theories. These theories were the social bond theory presented in 1969 and the second perspective, self-control theory introduced in 1990. The main reason it initially referred as a "social bond" is due to the original theory that proposed that criminal acts as a consequence insufficient meaningful link with the society. Fundamentally, people break the law since they have no respect or their feeling of belonging in society. The theory of social bond emphasizes more on the role contributed by the society in managing criminal conduct. Nearly all delinquency are due to lack of monitoring by the family of the delinquents and authorities. The chapter also takes more about the second theory of Travis. The second theory is the self-control theory. This viewpoint generated the substantial controversy and considerable research on its primary evidence that self-control has general effects. The author states that it was the central causal aspect in crime and deviancy through a persons life and across all social groups. For this matter, they call to have established a general theory of crime.

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In the chapter, the author has several arguments that are described here. First, Travis argues that those individuals that who have a robust and abiding attachment to the conformist society (which can occur in the form of attachment, involvement, belief, and investment) are less expected to digress than those individuals who have shallow or weak bonds in the society. This view received much critique from numerous people on the ground deviance. The author also argues that several individuals in society see almost similar roles in crime since such acts permit them to obtain what they need. Well, in the critique of this argument, Hirschi never disclosed empirically that individuals see similar benefits in crime, and he only assumed this as the case. Though, this is a crucial assumption. If several people view crime as having similar benefits as said by the author, if evil is tempting or gratifying to many peoplethen it rationally shows that several people are equally motivated to cause offence.

The author also argues that social bond applies to African American as well Whites. Grounded on limited data analyses, he concluded to that unfair deprivation from racial segregation. To offer critique to this, there was no need Travis to develop a theory that is race-specific since the cause of crime among the Negros may not differ from the whites.

The author theory also diverges on critical matters. He argues in his second theory that social bonds have no relation to crime rather a link between crime and social bond is spurious. In critique to this, the author attempts to mean that attachment and delinquency are only correlated simply because a third fundamental aspect causes them.

Finally, the author argues when he rejected classical school of criminology to the rational choice of theorists that crime is due just to a weighing of benefits and cost. This is not true since the cost of crime was never classical school and just a legal sanction.