ABSTRACT
In spite of the accolades for social control theory, Hirschi’s work has been criticized for the lack of attention to the delinquency of girls. While he had data from girls in the Richmond Youth Survey, Hirschi excluded them from his analysis, with no further explanation other than a footnote acknowledging that this omission had no justification. This study rectifies this by returning to the girls in the original Richmond Youth Survey. By replicating a good deal of Hirschi’s original work, and extending his analysis using multivariate regressions, this study finds that social control does indeed apply to girls. In fact, not only does social control serve to explain why boys commit more delinquency than girls, but also demonstrates that, with very minor exceptions, the theorized relationship between social control and delinquency is generalizable to both boys and girls.
