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Self-Control and Opportunity
Michael R. Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi
One of the most influential twentieth-century books on crime was entitled Delinquency and Opportunity (Cloward and Ohlin, 1960). At the time it was written, students of crime and delinquency understood that opportunity referred to access to legitimate and illegitimate avenues of advancement in American society. Legitimate opportunities were of course conventional educational and occupational careers; illegitimate opportunities were positions within an organized criminal subculture. Lack of either kind of opportunity had profound consequences for the likelihood and nature of a delinquent career. Delinquent acts themselves did not really require opportunities. Delinquents made their own.
Cloward and Ohlin were not alone in their view of the role of opportunity. On the contrary, they were well within the long-standing position that crime and delinquency are the product of positive and strong motives, the view that offenders are driven to their crimes by socially engendered needs or beliefs (definitions) that only crimes can satisfy (see also Parsons, 1951; Merton, 1938; Cohen, 1955; Sutherland, 1939).
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, much of criminology has abandoned this image of a âconstrainedâ offender required to do what he does (Matza, 1964) in favor of an image of a âpotentialâ offender who may or may not commit the crime depending on the objective and perceived opportunities available to him. Collectively, rational choice theories (Cornish and Clarke, 1986), routine activity-lifestyle/exposure theories (Cohen and Felson, 1979; H indelang, G ottfredson, and Garofalo, 1978), control theories (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990), and even such offshoots of differential association as social learning theory (Akers, 1998) command considerable attention. All are in varying degrees opportunity theories, where the opportunities of interest have no connection to those found in earlier theories of crime.
As might be expected, this shift of focus from the offender to the situation or âsettingâ (Felson and Clarke, 1998) has brought with it natural tendencies to emphasize or even exaggerate differences between past and current persp ectiv es and thus to miss opportunities to capitalize on their complementarities. As a theory of both crime and criminality, our self-control theory (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990) attempts to address the interplay of potential offenders and criminal opportunities without giving an exclusive role to either. Given the considerable research supportive of opportunity theory in recent years (Felson and Clarke, 1998), (andâif we mayâthe not inconsequential empirical success of self-control theory during the same period), this chapter attempts to reexamine and clarify the concept of opportunity from the perspective of self-control theory.
Self-control theory assumes that the nature of the offender may be inferred from the nature of criminal acts, and vice versa. In other words, it assumes a fit between acts and individuals such that we can learn the salient characteristics of one by examination of the other.
Traditionally, criminology looked at offenders and allowed the characteristics imputed to them to determine the nature of crime. Thus, in a famous example, delinquents were said to be lower-class boys whose wish to be liked by middle-class teachers had not been granted, all of which explained the malicious, negativistic, and non-utilitarian nature of their delinquent acts (Cohen, 1955). Perhaps partly in response to the persistent tendency of the traditional approach to downplay or even deny the relevance of the immediate setting, modem opportunity theorists have been reluctant to attribute characteristics to offenders over and above their willingness to commit crimes under favorable circumstances. But there is a more important reason for such reluctance. Opportunity theory is seen by its advocates as a practical crime prevention strategy tested by modifying a setting and observing the results. As such, it is not bound by the rules usually applied to abstract social science theories. The principles it follows are analogous to those that apply to searches for safer cars, for means of reducing the risks of drunk driving, or even for a light bulb that works. Success is all the proof one needs, and failureâeven repeated failureâcannot gainsay the effort.
We have no qualms about the practical value of this strategy, or about the benefits accruing to it from its reluctance to pursue the implications of its results for the nature of offenders. At the same time, we believe its results can be further exploited by scholars interested in understanding the interaction between individual predispositions and the opportunities available to them. We begin with a sketch of the offense and the offender from the perspective of self-control theory.
The Offense in Self-Control Theory
Self-control theory sees criminal acts to be as âeasy as falling down a mountain.â No special skill or preparation and no planning are required to snatch a purse, throw a rock through a car window, open an unlocked door or cash drawer, or fire a gun at a stranger. All that is required for the acts described is the degree of physical strength normally attained by early adolescence. Otherwise, all of them would be within the capabilities of children. Self- control theory sees crimes as split-second events, requiring such little time for their execution that many different crimes can be committed simultaneously or consecutively in a matter of minutes, and only rarely will one crime because of the time and effort involved preclude commission of another. Self-control theory sees criminal acts as exciting, risky, or thrilling. The house may be occupied; the victim may possess a lethal weapon; the audit may discover the discrepancy; the witness may get the word to the police in time for them to appear on the scene; the drug may not have been cut to the degree assumed. Self-control theory sees crime as producing only meager short-term benefits. The victimâs purse, however it was obtained, may contain only a few dollars; the stolen jewelry or electronic equipment may be declared worthless by the pawnbroker; the next morning it may be impossible to remember what provoked the stabbing at the bar.
Available data abundantly support the view that crimes are rarely products of extensive planning, effort, or skill. Most occur in close proximity to the offenderâs residence or within his daily round. The âburglarâ walks to the scene of the crime, the ârobberâ victimizes available targets on the street, the âembezzlerâ steals from his own cash register at the fast food restaurant, the âcar th ie fâ drives away cars with keys left in the ignition. The âburglarâ searches for an unlocked door, an open window, an unoccupied, single-story house. (Once inside, he looks for easily portable goods of interest to himself without concern for their potential value in a larger market.) The truant merely stays home and watches television or sleeps a few extra hours. The abuser gets his way by using force against a child or a weaker adult. Indeed, the major requirement for successful completion of crimes of violence is superior strength or command of instruments of forceâ a gun, a knife, a club, or a table lamp. Some property crimes may require physical strength or dexterity, but in most cases no more than that necessary for the ordinary activities of life. Likewise, sex, drugs, and alcohol require no special training, little teaching, and no particular skill. Quite the contraryâlearning to defer pleasures of mood, to attend to obligations, to wait oneâs turn in line, to negotiate needs with others, to respect the rights of the weak, requires diligent training and teaching, accomplished by someone who cares about the outcome.
The Offender in Self-Control Theory
Control theories are restraint theories. They are not motivational theories. They take the benefits of crime as obvious, and consider search for hidden motives, reasons, or benefits to be at best unrewarding and at worst clearly misleading. (For example, if the offender is found to have needs or wants that explain a particular crime, he would be expected to engage in other offenses consistent with these peculiar needs or wantsâi.e., he would be expected to specialize in particular crimes and expend if necessary special effort to accomplish them. Unfortunately for this approach, offenders do not specialize and, as we have just seen, they tend to be strangely disinclined to crimes that entail much in the way of inconvenience.) So, in control theories, differences among people in criminal behavior reflect differences in the restraints confronting them (including those in the immediate environment) rather than differences in motivation to offend. In self-control theory, individuals are restrained from crime because they care about the long-term or broader consequences of their behavior. Because they take the easy way, because they gain little from their crimes and risk much from committing them, offenders are characterized as having relatively little self-control (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990).
Research and the facts about criminal behavior tell us that self-control is generated in the early years of life, prim arily through parental action (Hirschi, 1983, 2002; Glueck and Glueck, 1950; Loeber and Stouthamer- Loeber, 1986; McCord and McCord, 1959; McCord, 1979). In families in which parents care about their childrenâs behavior, in which they monitor their childrenâs actions, in which they recognize deviant behavior, and in which they penalize illegitimate use of force and fraud, self-control becomes a stable characteristic of the child. To some degree, the school also plays a role in the development of self-control. Children attached to school develop long-term aspirations and commitments to the future inconsistent with self-serving impulses and behavior that are costly to others (Hirschi, 2002). In the absence of early training in the family and compensatory interest in the school and further education, the individual will be relatively low on self-controlâthat is, relatively susceptible to the lures of momentary pleasure.
Opportunity in Self-Control Theory
Opportunities are sets of circumstances favorable to crime. At one extreme, such circumstances make crime possible. At the other extreme, they make crime virtually necessary. Between these extremes, circumstances make crime more or less likely and, together with the propensities of potential offenders, account for variations in crime rates. Even where circumstances are least favorable to crime, possibilities of crime may add up to the probability of crime. This is because criminal acts are mainly momentary events, and life is full of moments. As a result, it is possible to say that crime is an âever-present possibility in human affairsâ (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990: 4), that âcrime can happen to anyone,â that âeveryone is capable of crime.â
Put another way, criminal acts are possible whatever the propensities of potential offendersâ and isolated or single criminal events may as a result say very little about those responsible for them. At the same time, criminal and analogous acts are so numerous that measures of the criminal propensity of the actor constructed from the number of different acts in which he participates are not invalidated by variation in opportunity across individual offenses. At the extremes, then, and at all points between, it is reasonable to say that with respect to evaluation of the criminal propensity of individuals, opportunities for crime are ubiquitous (Marcus, 2000; Marcus, in press). This fact answers the criticism of self-control theory that it does not deal sufficiently with the concept of opportunity. It confirms that self-control can be measured and the theory assessed without undue concern for differences in opportunities to commit criminal, deviant, or reckless acts.
Early tests of self-control theory (e.g., Grasmick et al., 1993) misunderstood this point, interpreting the theory as giving equal causal significance to self-control and opportunity. We interpreted the theory otherwise:
In the view of the theory, opportunities to commit one or another crime or analogous acts are limitless. Opportunities to commit a particular act may be severely limited, however (Hirschi and Gottfredson, 1987). Self-control and opportunity may therefore interact for specific crimes, but are in the general case independent. For example, driving under the influence (DUI) should be largely a function of self-control. But not entirely [W]here legal restrictions on the availability of alcohol are enforced (such as age restrictions on purchasing), the DUI rate is reduced. Further, in many cases, self-control and opportunity are not independent. In order to embezzle from banks, one needs first to be employed in one, a condition that depends in part on (high) self-control and its consequences. Access to information on how to smuggle drugs is enhanced by a term in prison, a condition too that depends in part on (low) self-control and its consequences. The generality of the theory thus stems from its conception of the offender, a conception that must be taken into consideration before situational or âstructuralâ influences can be understood. (Hirschi and Gottfredson, 1993:50)
Along the same lines: In our understanding, circumstances cannot require crime because the offender must by definition participate in the actâthat is, he or she is always the element that transforms conditions necessary for crime into conditions collectively sufficient to produce the act in question. In this sense, the idea that âopportunity makes the th iefâ is as destructive of social policy directed at offenders as the idea that âpoverty makes them do itâ is of social policy directed at reduction of criminal opportunities.
Factors Affecting Opportunity
To say that opportunities for crime are ubiquitous is not to say that opportunities for any particular crime are ubiquitous. Each crime or type of crime has a unique opportunity structure or set of conditions necessary for its performance. Here, for example, is a discussion of the logical structure of auto theft, and its implications for prevention of this particular crime:
Auto theft is an especially complex crime. In order for car theft to occur, there must be an automobile that is accessible, drivable, and attractive. There must also be an offender who is both capable of driving and insufficiently restrained. For auto theft, as opposed to joyriding, it is also necessary that the offender possess the means to maintain and store the vehicle.. . .
Auto theft can therefore be prevented by reduction in the number of automobiles, by making access to automobiles more difficult, by making them more difficult to drive, and by making them less attractive to offenders. Auto theft can also be reduced by increasing restraints on people who tend toward criminality, perhaps by making eighteen the minimum age for a driverâs license. (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990:35)
To say that everyone is capable of crime is not to say that everyone is capable of every crime. Indeed, opportunities for particular crimes may vary immensely over time and place, and from one individual to another. Thus, most 12-year-olds are incapable of auto theft because they have not learned to drive, and most 30-year-olds are incapable of truancy because they are no longer enrolled in school. Thus, most British citizens are incapable of murder with a handgun, and most of us are incapable of insider trading. By the same token, when automobiles came on the scene, they quickly replaced horses as criminal opportunities, and no object now outweighs the airplane as a focus of opportunity restriction.
Such shifts in the opportunity structure for particular crimes say nothing about the relation between self-control and crime. The 12-year-old who cannot steal a car may well steal a bicycle; the 30-year-old who cannot be truant from school may well be truant from work and family obligations. The British citizen with low-self control may find many other ways to let his tendencies be known, as may those of us barred from insider trading. The horse thief of yesterday is todayâs auto thief. Insofar as he tends to act on behalf of a nationstate, a political group, or even his own family, the skyjacker may be something else again. But here too it makes little sense to focus on opportunity restriction without concern for the tendencies and capabilities of potential offenders.
Indeed, even from this brief list of examples it is apparent that opportunities for crime are affected by technological, political, and economic factors, and by properties of the individual other than self-control. Age matters, and so does sex. Indeed, sex differences in crime depend in good measure on the offense in question, so much so that Zager was led to conclude that âgender is best seen as an opportunity [rather than a motivational or self-control] factorâ (1994: 77). And so do size and strength matter. As Felson (1996) puts it, big people hit little people. As the Gluecks would put it, mesomorphs are more likely to be delinquent (Glueck and Glueck, 1950: 181-97). It was once thought that intelligence was an opportunity factor. Bright or informed people were better able than not-so-bright-or-informed people to conceive and execute crimes. We know now that crimes requiring keen insight are extremely rare, that anticipation of consequences w...
