ABSTRACT
Social control theories are considered sociologically rooted because they look at the social processes and social organizational arrangements to help explain crime and deviance. Most control theories assume that people are socialized into conventional behavior from an early age, but something breaks or weakens the bonds to convention and frees a person to deviate. Another kind of control theory assumes that the very creation of a commitment to convention and to socially approved norms and values is difficult to achieve; it requires much investment of time and energy and considerable maintenance, and it can easily go wrong. With control theories, it is a failure to bond, or a breaking of a bond, to conventional society or the failure to develop ability to resist impulses that allows people the freedom to commit crime. For some control theorists, this impulsivity is related to the failure to develop positive self-esteem.
