Travis Hirschi - The Generality of Deviance

First published 1994 by Transaction Publishers

Published 2017 by Routledge

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Copyright 1994 by Taylor & Francis.

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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 93-16816

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Generality of deviance / edited by Travis Hirschi, Michael R. Gottfredson.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

ISBN 1-56000-116-X

1. Deviant behavior. 2. Self-control. I. Hirschi, Travis. II. Gottfredson, Michael R.

HM291.G33 1993

302.542dc20

93-16816

CIP

ISBN 13: 978-1-56000-116-4 (hbk)

The editors gratefully acknowledge the following publishers and publications for permission to use previously published material: University Press of America, Inc., for Family Structure and Crime, in When Families Fail... The Social Costs, ed. Bryce J. Christensen (1991), 43-65; Sage Publications, Inc., for Substantive Positivism and the Idea of Crime, Rationality and Society 2 (October 1990):412-28; American Psychological Association, for A Control Theory Interpretation of Psychological Research on Aggression, in Aggression and Violence: Social Interactionist Perspectives, ed. R. B. Felson and J. T. Tedeschi (1993), 47-68.

Theories in criminology are typically tested by examining their ability to provide conceptual and empirical explanations of forms of crime or deviance, but they are not restricted to this role alone. In fact, theories of crime may also act as guides to public policy, as bases for assessment of the functioning of social institutions, and even as sources of insight into the practices of academic disciplines. The more general a theory, the more diverse the topics to which it can be applied. With this thought in mind, the chapters in this volume assess the empirical adequacy and conceptual utility of the theory of self control advanced in our book, A General Theory of Crime (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990). The topics covered are correspondingly diverse, ranging from such concrete forms of deviance as rape, drug use, and accidents to such abstract issues as versatility, aggression, and even positivism. In all cases the goal is the same: to explore the generality of the theory, its applicability to a variety of questions of interest to criminology.

Although none of the essays is based on data collected with the theory explicitly in mind, each explores the applicability of the theory to a particular institution, conceptual issue, social problem, or form of risky behavior. Collectively, then, the works in this volume are meant to illustrate and even test the generality of the theory, a theory explicitly designed to encompass the full range of criminal, deviant, and reckless behavior.

The theory, simply stated, is this: Criminal acts are a subset of acts in which the actor ignores the long-term negative consequences that flow from the act itself (e.g., the health consequences of drug use), from the social or familial environment (e.g., a spouses reaction to infidelity), or from the state (e.g., the criminal justice response to robbery). All acts that share this feature, including criminal acts, are therefore likely to be engaged in by individuals unusually sensitive to immediate pleasure and insensitive to long-term consequences. The immediacy of the benefits of crime implies that they are obvious to the actor, that no special skill or learning is required. The property of individuals that explains variation in the likelihood of engaging in such acts we call self-control. The evidence suggests to us that variation in self-control is established early in life, and that differences between individuals remain reasonably constant over the life course. It also suggests, consistent with the idea of self-control, that individuals will tend to engage in (or avoid) a wide variety of criminal and analogous behaviorsthat they will not specialize in some to the exclusion of others, nor will they escalate into more serious or skillful criminal behavior over time.

Both the stability of differences between individuals and the versatility of offenders can be derived from the fact that all such acts follow a predictable path over the life course, peaking in the middle to late teens, and then declining steadily throughout life. If children who offend by whining and pushing and shoving are the adults who offend by robbing and raping, it must be that whining and pushing and shoving are the theoretical equivalents of robbery and rape. If robbery and rape are theoretical equivalents, they should be engaged in by the same people. They are engaged in by the same people (putting the lie to the idea that each of them is peculiarly motivated). If deviant acts at different phases of the life course are engaged in differentially by the same individuals, the underlying trait must be extremely stable over time. If the same individuals tend to engage in serious and trivial acts, these acts must satisfy equivalent desires of the actor.

Evidence for a latent trait that somehow causes deviant behavior thus comes from two primary sources. The first is the statistical association among diverse criminal, deviant, or reckless acts. Because these acts are behaviorally heterogeneous, because they occur in a variety of situations, and because they entail different sets of necessary conditions, it seems reasonable to suppose that what they have in common somehow resides in the person committing them. The second is the stability of differences between individuals over time. Because individuals relatively likely to commit criminal, deviant, or reckless acts at one point in time are also relatively likely to commit such acts at later points in time, it seems reasonable to ascribe these differences to a persistent underlying trait possessed in different degrees by those whose behavior is being compared.

The standards described are well-known as tests of internal consistency and test-retest reliability (or stability). When applied to measures of crime, they offer compelling evidence that a stable trait of personality underlies much criminal, deviant, and reckless behavior (Greenberg 1991; Rowe, Osgood, and Nicewander 1990; Osgood 1990; Osgood et al. 1988; Olweus 1979; Nagin and Farrington 1992).

If the evidence requires that we grant the existence of reliable differences among individuals in the tendency to commit deviant acts, the evidence it seems to us also requires that we conceptualize this latent trait in particular ways. For example, we cannot make it conducive to specialization in some deviant acts rather than others, because that would be contrary to its generality (we cannot easily conceptualize it as internalization of norms, because that would suggest the possibility of internalizing some norms and not others, an idea also contrary to the finding of generality); we cannot make it akin to aggressiveness, because that would be contrary to its often passive, furtive, or retreatist consequences; we cannot make it a positive force requiring for its satisfaction the commission of clearly criminal acts, because it is not conducive to persistence in a course of action but is instead conducive to momentary satisfaction of transient desires. Reasoning in this way, and from examination of the diverse acts produced by or consistent with this latent trait, we concluded that it was best seen as