IV.

Proposed Policy
According to control theorists, people do not engage in crime because of the
controls or restraints placed on them. These controls may be viewed as barriers to
crime. They refer to those factors that prevent them from engaging crime. Control
Theory focuses on the factors that restrain the individual from engaging in crime.
This integrated theory lists three major type of control: Direct control, stake in
conformity, and internal control.
Direct control also involves monitoring the person’s behavior to ensure that they
comply with these rules and do not engage in crime. Monitoring may be direct or
indirect. In direct monitoring, the person is under the direct surveillance of a parent
or other conventional “authority figures”. In indirect monitoring, the parents or
authority figure does not directly observe the person but make an effort to keep
tabs on what they are doing. The parents for example, may ask the juvenile where
he or she is going, may periodically call the juvenile, and ask others juvenile’s
Behavior
Stake in conformity the efforts to directly control behavior are a major restraint to
crime. These efforts however are more effective with some people than with others.
For example all juveniles are subject to more or less the same direct controls at
school. The same rules, the same monitoring, and the same sanctions if they
deviate. Yet some juveniles are very responsive to these controls while others
commit deviant acts on a regular basis. One reason for this is that some juveniles
have mote to lose by engaging in deviance. These juveniles have what has been
called a high “stake in conformity”, and they do not want to jeopardize that stake
by engaging in deviance.
Internal control people sometimes find themselves in situations where they are
tempted to engage in crime and the probability of external sanction is low. Yet
many people still refrain from crime. The reason is that they are high in internal
control. They are able to restrain themselves from engaging in crime. Internal
control is a function of their beliefs regarding crime and their level of self-control.
Most people believe that crime is wrong and this belief acts as a major restraint to
crime. The extent to which people believe that crime is wrong is at least partly a
function of their level of direct control and their stake in conformity. We’re they
closely attached to their parents and did their parents attempt to teach them what
crime is wrong? If not, such individuals may form an amoral orientation to crime
they believe that crime is neither good nor bad. As a consequence, their beliefs do
not restrain them from engaging in crime. Their beliefs do not propel or push them
into crime; they do not believe that crime is good. Their amoral beliefs simply free
them to pursue their needs and desires in most expedient way. Rather then being
taught that crime is good, control theorists argues that some people are simple not
taught that crime is bad.