ABSTRACT
This chapter describes what is meant by a control theory of crime and delinquency. At the societal level, the assumption critical to control theories is the expectation that society can introduce mechanisms that will either prevent or reduce the chances an individual will perceive a criminal act as beneficial. Ruth Rosner Kornhauser's approach makes a great deal of sense: control theory is predicated on a conception of social order that starts, in essence, at the macro level. Beyond the macro-level baseline assumptions about social order, from authors' perspective, there is a long tradition of both macro-level and micro-level control theories of crime. Robert Agnew's reformulation of strain theory as general strain theory (GST) was, in many ways, a direct response to Kornhauser's critique of strain theory. The chapter concludes by highlighting few issues that have the potential either to strengthen or to weaken control theory's current dominance in the field.
