ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the more important macro-level approaches to explaining the causes of crime in sociological criminology. It shows that the concept of institutions has not been applied rigorously in any of the approaches. The chapter provides a formal concept of institutions and show how this concept is often confounded with related concepts. It discusses promising issues for a distinctively institutional analysis of crime and discusses some of the more important challenges that must be met if criminological theory is to be more fully “institutionalized.” Criminological theories are often distinguished on the basis of levels of explanation and corresponding units of analysis. Institutional regulation refers to the degree of conformity with the rules themselves, that is, the extent to which institutional roles are enacted faithfully. A criminological illustration of the importance of institutional structure for understanding individual criminal behavior entails the differential effect of school failure on delinquency in relation to the articulation of the educational system with the economy.
