the individual need to be in balance with the norms of the institution or this may lead to delinquency. In order to investigate this idea, he examined a number of factors to predict probation revocation among juvenile offenders. He looked at court records of 1110 white male juvenile probationers between the ages of 11 and 17 and found that probation revocation was more likely when the juvenile was diagnosed with having weak ego or superego controls which would count as weak personal controls. In addition he also found that probation revocation was more likely when the juveniles didn’t attend school regularly therefore lacked the social controls. (Vold et al, 2002)
Reiss (1951) says, “Primary groups are the basic institutions for the development of personal controls and the exercise of social control. This is further explained by Paternoster and Bachman (in McLaughlin & Newburn, 2010) who comment that “one of the most important institutions in the development of social control of the individual is the family”. Reiss further argues that attachments between parents and children are important as where the bond is strong they are more likely to exercise direct control over the child. Whilst this theory was a good starting point in relation to control theory, there were a number of methodological flaws in his research which may discredit his claim that personal and social controls prevent us from committing crime. One flaw is that the research sample is not representative as it doesn’t take into account race, gender or different age categories therefore it is difficult to generalise this research to other people. In addition, Vold et Al (2002) says that the strongest associations in the research were between personal controls; however they take the diagnoses by the psychiatrist at face value and do not comment on the strengths and weaknesses of this method of testing. Furthermore, the research on social controls and probation rev...