Explain Elliott et al.’s integrated strain-control paradigm. In doing so, discuss which theories are seen in this paradigm and how the paradigm explains crime across the life course. According to this paradigm, how can one reduce the likelihood of criminal behavior?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The key feature of childhood is whether children establish strong or weak bonds. They divided the social bond into two parts: integration (the “external” or “social” bond) and commitment (the “internal” or “personal” bond). Those who establish strong bonds during childhood and then maintain them in adolescence have a low probability of engaging in delinquency. By contrast, weak bonds in childhood place youngsters on a clear pathway to stable criminal involvement. As these children age into the teen years, they are increasingly exposed to delinquent peer groups. There is a second pathway to delinquency. Many children who establish strong bonds are set on a pathway that leads them into conventional peer groups and lives of conventional behavior. Even so, some children who initially form strong bonds nonetheless become enmeshed in crime and drug use. This outcome, it should be noted, is inconsistent with traditional social bond theory, which would predict that such bonds should insulate youths from delinquency. But in Elliott and colleagues’ model, events can occur in adolescence that create sufficient strain on a youth personally or on the social bond to cause the individual’s “commitment” to and “integration” into conventional society to “attenuate.” They reintroduced social learning theory. A small proportion of youths, they admitted, might experience so much strain from blocked goals that they proceed directly into delinquency, at least on a short-term basis. Others might lose their commitment to success goals--become alienated from conventional ideas of success--and seek some adventure or thrills, for example, through drug use. Mostly, however, youths whose bonds are strained and weakened become involved in delinquent peer groups. Like those who never formed strong bonds, due to these associations, these youngsters are embedded in stable criminality.