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Results for self-control

5 results found

Author: Piquero, Alex R.

Title: Effectiveness of Programs Designed to Improve Self-Control

Summary: Gottfredson and Hirschi's general theory of crime has generated significant controversy and research, such that there now exists a large knowledge base regarding the importance of self-control in regulating antisocial behavior over the life course. Reviews of this literature indicate that self-control is an important correlate of antisocial activity. There has been some research examining programmatic efforts designed to examine the extent to which self-control is malleable, but little empirical research on this issue has been carried out within criminology, largely because the theorists have not paid much attention to policy proscriptions. This study evaluates the extant research on the effectiveness of programs designed to improve self-control up to age 10 among children and adolescents, and assesses the effects of these programs on self-control and delinquency/crime. Meta-analytic results indicate that: (1) self-control programs improve a child/adolescent's self control; (2) these interventions also reduce delinquency; and (3) the positive effects generally hold across a number of different moderator variables and groupings as well as by outcome source (parent-, teacher-, direct observer-, self-, and clinical report). Theoretical and policy implications are also discussed.

Details: Stockholm: Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, 2009. 44p.

Source:

Year: 2009

Country: International

URL:

Shelf Number: 116628

Keywords:
Anti-Social Behavior
Delinquency Prevention
General Theory of Crime
Self-Control

Author: Piquero, Alex R.

Title: Self-Control Interventions for Children Under Age 10 for Improving Self-Control and Delinquency and Problem Behaviors

Summary: Self-control improvement programs are intended to serve many purposes, most notably improving self-control. Yet, interventions such as these often aim to reduce delinquency and problem behaviors. However, there is currently no summary statement available regarding whether or not these programs are effective in improving self-control and reducing delinquency and problem behaviors. The main objective of this review is to assess the available research evidence on the effect of self-control improvement programs on self-control and delinquency and problem behaviors. In addition to investigating the overall effect of early self-control improvement programs, this review examines, to the extent possible, the context in which these programs may be most successful. The studies included in this systematic review indicate that self-control improvement programs are an effective intervention for improving self-control and reducing delinquency and problem behaviors, and that the effect of these programs appears to be rather robust across various weighting procedures, and across context, outcome source, and based on both published and unpublished data.

Details: Oslo: Campbell Collaboration, 2010. 117p.

Source: Internet Resource: Campbell Systematic Review, 2010:2: Accessed August 28, 2010 at: http://campbellcollaboration.org/lib/download/792/

Year: 2010

Country: International

URL: http://campbellcollaboration.org/lib/download/792/

Shelf Number: 119703

Keywords:
Delinquency Prevention
Juvenile Delinquency
Juvenile Offenders
Self-Control
Treatment Programs

Author: Nobles, Matt R.

Title: Understanding How Some Victims Become Perpetrators: Self-Control as Moderator

Summary: Although much of the criminology literature conceptualizes the overlap in victims and offenders as originating with perpetration behaviors that result in increased risk of victimization, some evidence suggests that the reverse order also may be predictive. Socio-psychological literature, for example, offers alternative explanations demonstrating that perpetration in adolescence and adulthood may be driven by a lifetime history of traumatic victimization (e.g. child abuse or neglect, peer conflicts). Research on individual-level personality and experiential factors, including a history of certain types of victimization, is significantly associated with different forms of future perpetration, including adolescent weapon carrying, intimate partner physical abuse, child molestation, and adult sexual abuse. Smith and Ecob’s review of theoretical explanations of the victimization-perpetration link, highlight the roles environmental contextual factors and individual beliefs may play post-victimization. Sub-cultural explanations also may be valuable to address the phenomenon. For example, both personal value systems in gangs and learned aggression via victimization may offer clear pathways to future perpetration. In this case, there would be the intersection of the effects of individual traits, such as personality and self-control, and structural effects. Further, the interaction of individual and structural characteristics may provide additional predictive value to this relationship. Gottfredson and Hirschi posit in their general theory of crime that low levels of self-control are associated with criminal behavior throughout the life course, an idea that has generated wide empirical support. The theory also has been extended to account for different forms of victimization. Research from different areas of the psychology literature suggests that a history of certain types of victimization predicts later perpetration through various mechanisms. To date no research has explicitly tested low self-control as a moderating influence in the relationship between various forms of victimization and perpetration. The present study hypothesizes that low self-control affects the direction and strength of this relationship and that the relative influence of the moderation varies across crime types.

Details: Huntsville, TX: Crime Victims' Institute, Criminal Justice Center, Sam Houston State University, 2012. 20p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 9, 2012 at http://www.crimevictimsinstitute.org/documents/8793%20Self%20Control%20Report.pdf

Year: 2012

Country: United States

URL: http://www.crimevictimsinstitute.org/documents/8793%20Self%20Control%20Report.pdf

Shelf Number: 124401

Keywords:
Offenders
Re-Offending
Self-Control
Victimization

Author: Hollander-Blumoff, Rebecca

Title: Crime, Punishment, and the Psychology of Self-Control

Summary: Criminal law rests on the assumption that individuals — most of the time — have free will. They act in ways that they choose to act, exercising control over their own behavior. Despite this central role of free will and self-control in the conceptualization of criminal responsibility, criminal law scholars have not, to date, considered the implications of decades of research in social psychology on the mechanisms of self-control. This article suggests that examining current social psychology research on self-control offers a novel way to amplify our thinking about crime and punishment, helping to make sense of the way that the law has developed, casting doubt on the descriptive validity of legal perspectives on self-control and crime, and offering potential guidance as we think about appropriate levels of culpability and punishment. Two important broad insights come from examining this psychological research. First, by considering self-control failure at the micro level — in a particular moment of action or inaction — psychological research on self-control helps uncouple self-control questions from broader questions about the existence of free will. The roots of failure to control one’s behavior, important though they may be, are separate from the question of an individual’s ability to do so at a specific time and place. Psychology’s robust findings on the fine-grained aspects of self-control suggest that self-control is a concept with meaning and usefulness for the law, regardless of one’s viewpoint about the existence of free will. Second, taking psychological research on self-control seriously indicates that criminal law may vastly underdescribe the scope of situations in which an individual lacks the ability to control her actions. That is, acts that the law calls “uncontrolled” are a mere subset of the behavior that psychology would call “uncontrolled.” The mismatch between the scope of self-control as described by psychology and criminal law helps to highlight that notions of self-control in the law are inherently constructed by the law itself, rather than reflecting some empirical reality, and that any efforts to define and understand the concept and role of self-control in law as purely positive, rather than normative, are misguided.

Details: St. Louis, MO: Washington University in Saint Louis - School of Law, 2012. 54p.

Source: Internet Resource: Washington University in St. Louis Legal Studies Research Paper No. 12-05-22: Accessed July 6, 2012 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2080858


Year: 2012

Country: United States

URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2080858


Shelf Number: 125488

Keywords:
Criminal Law
Law and Psychology
Self-Control

Author: Kivivuori, Janne

Title: The Robustness of Self-Control as a Predictor of Recidivism

Summary: In prior research, we examined the correlates of self-assessed re-offending probability (SARP) in a sample of Finnish short-term prisoners (Kivivuori and Linderborg 2009 and 2010). We observed that multiple variables tapping the social adjustment and social deprivation of the prisoner were associated with SARP. Having few or no siblings, having lived outside nuclear family conditions during childhood, lack of parental supervision during youth, and negative events during adulthood increased the variety of offences the prisoner projected to his post-release future. Negative events were incidents that reflect poverty or the breaking of social ties: being fired from a job, divorce, being evicted from an apartment, need to seek social assistance, need to loan money from friends and relatives, and mental health problems. The research additionally included two measures tapping the dimension of personal self-control. We observed that low self-control and high youth crime involvement were associated with increased SARP. One of the basic goals of the research is to examine social factors and self-control as correlates of SARP, when both are simultaneously controlled in a single model. In this respect, the core finding was that social factors and self-control were both significant correlates of SARP. These findings were based on a cross-sectional survey of short-term prisoners in Finland (Kivivuori & Linderborg 2009 and 2010). The basic structure of the data was cross-sectional, even though the outcome variable was pseudo-longitudinal (offences subjectively projected to post-release future). In reporting the cross-sectional findings, we also anticipated the logical next step, namely, replacing the subjective and cross-sectional outcome variable (SARP) with a genuinely longitudinal outcome variable (Kivivuori & Linderborg 2010, 137). In this research brief, we build on this by using a genuinely longitudinal outcome variable of recorded recidivism (RR) after release from prison. Replacing SARP with RR enabled us to do three things: first, we examined whether the prisoners' estimates concerning their own future behaviour were correct. Second, we assessed whether variables associated with SARP remain robust predictors when their link to RR is investigated. Third, we tentatively assessed whether SARP itself, now conceptualised as prisoner desistance optimism during the prison term, is a predictor of recidivism.

Details: Helsinki: National Research Institute of Legal Policy, 2012. 8p.

Source: Internet Resource: Research Brief 25/2012: Accessed February 27, 2015 at: http://www.optula.om.fi/material/attachments/optula/julkaisut/verkkokatsauksia-sarja/E9Lo8aUWV/25_research_note.pdf

Year: 2012

Country: Finland

URL: http://www.optula.om.fi/material/attachments/optula/julkaisut/verkkokatsauksia-sarja/E9Lo8aUWV/25_research_note.pdf

Shelf Number: 134729

Keywords:
Desistance
Recidivism (Finland)
Reoffending
Self-Control
Social Capital
Social Control