Causes of Delinquency

Front Cover
University of California Press, 1969 - Juvenile delinquency - 309 pages
Hirschi studies data and rejects the two prevailing theories -- the criminal is either one who is a frustrated striver forced into deliquency by his acceptance of goals common to us all or one who is an innocent foreigner attempting to obey the rules of a society that is not in a position to make the law or define "evil" conduct. Rather he states the case that delinquents are often free of serious intimate attachments, aspirations, and moral beliefs that bind most people under the theory of social control.
 

Contents

Perspectives on Delinquency
3
A Control Theory of Delinquency
16
The Sample and the Data
35
What is Delinquency?
47
The Social Distribution of Delinquency
65
Attachment to Parents
83
Attachment to the School
110
Attachment to Peers
135
Involvement in Conventional Activities
187
Belief
197
A Look Back
225
Appendixes A Some Traditional Variables and Delinquency
235
B A Note on Techniques of Analysis
245
Research Instruments
247
Selected Bibliography
301
Index
305

Commitment to Conventional Lines of Action
162

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