Michael R. Gottfredson’s research while affiliated with University of California, Irvine and other places

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Publications (114)


Intimate Partner Violence, Femicide, and General Theories: Issues for Research and Policy From the View of Modern Control Theory
  • Article

April 2024

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8 Reads

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2 Citations

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

Michael R. Gottfredson

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Mikaela S. Nielsen

Intimate partner violence (IPV), including intimate partner homicide (IPH) and femicide, raises issues for general theories of crime, such as control and opportunity theories, that see close relationships among friends and family as barriers to interpersonal crimes. Crime-specific studies of both correlates and trends in IPV, including recent interrupted trend studies that examine the effects of COVID restrictions, often test opportunity theories absent considerations of theoretically driven images of actors. Review of empirical research on IPV and IPH reveals strong compatibility between the predictions of modern control theory and consistent findings from trend data. Barriers to understanding of the explanatory power of general theories of crime (including, for example, control theories and feminist perspectives) in contemporary research include use of poor definitions of intimacy, misspecification of age effects, failure to consider the versatility of offending behavior, neglecting the importance of trends in analogous behaviors, neglecting the role of situational factors in violence, and the limitations in the measurement of repetitive victimization. Theories such as routine activity and situational crime prevention that fail to explicitly include characteristics of actors can go only a limited way in providing meaningful policy. Research supports the potential policy effects of investments in early childhood and attention to situational barriers (including limitations on alcohol use and firearm availability) to reduce IPV. Although modern control theory is used to illustrate these issues, other general theories, like feminist theories, can make similar arguments.


The five essential elements of modern control theory.
Source Adapted from Gottfredson (2021)
The Essential Role of Cross-national Research in Assessing Theories of Crime: Illustrations from Modern Control Theory
  • Article
  • Full-text available

March 2021

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263 Reads

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9 Citations

International Criminology

Contemporary research from around the world provides a body of consistent findings, making it an indispensable tool for the evaluation of crime theory. To be valid, general theories of crime must now be able to accommodate the results of this cross-national research. Modern Control Theory is used as an illustration for conceptualizing this body of research. Research from three critical areas relevant to general theories of crime are used to illustrate the critical nature of this research: (1) results from self-report surveys of offending and victimization; (2) research on the lack of effectiveness of criminal justice sanctions in affecting rates of crime and interpersonal violence; and (3) prevention research that is focused both on early childhood and on the settings in which much crime occurs. Each is consistent with the expectations of Modern Control Theory (Gottfredson and Hirschi in Modern control theory and the limits of criminal justice, Oxford University Press, New York, 2019) and each demands the attention of any general theory purporting to explain crime and interpersonal violence.

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Self‐Control Theory of Crime

November 2019

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25 Reads

Self‐control is a concept used by sociologists to explain differences among people in the frequency of engaging in a wide variety of acts, including crime and delinquency, that cause harm to others. It is defined as the tendency to avoid acts whose long term costs exceed their momentary advantages


General Theory and Global Criminology: Childhood Environments, Problem Behaviors, and a Focus on Prevention

December 2018

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199 Reads

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15 Citations

Asian Journal of Criminology

General theories of crime and delinquency are tested in part by their ability to explain the empirical findings of cross-national research. Systematic research using comparable survey methods provides a rich body of data from many countries and settings that inform such tests. There are several aspects of the general theory proposed by Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) that facilitate the idea of global criminology which, coupled with this growing research literature, support the idea of general theories of crime. These include use of a “crime-free” definition for dependent variables, disciplinary-free assumptions about human nature, appreciating the distinction between propensities and events in crime theory, incorporating the burgeoning empirical literature from many disciplines stressing the importance of childhood environments and self-control, and focusing on recent successful prevention efforts. A set of research needs stimulated by modern global criminology are also proposed.








Citations (53)


... The bonds formed early in life impact those that form later. As noted by Gottfredson & Nielsen (2024), "similar to the relationship between early development of social bonds and self-control, how one views and engages in intimacy begins in the family and converges later in their intimate relationships" (p. 256). ...

Reference:

Childhood Neglect, Low Self-Control, and Violence Victimization in the Czech Republic and the United States: A Cross-Cultural Comparison
Intimate Partner Violence, Femicide, and General Theories: Issues for Research and Policy From the View of Modern Control Theory
  • Citing Article
  • April 2024

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

... P5: Durante el período de estudio, ¿se administró la intervención (o se produjo la exposición) según lo previsto? (Fishbein y Ajzen, 1975), Modelo de desarrollo social (Hawkins et al., 1992), Teoría del autorrechazo (Kaplan, 1996), Teoría multietápica del aprendizaje social (Simons et al., 1988), Teoría de la conducta problema (Jessor y Jessor, 1977), Teoría del autocontrol (Hirschi y Gottfredson, 1988 (Fishbein y Ajzen, 1975), Modelo de desarrollo social (Hawkins et al., 1992), Modelo evolutivo (Kandel, 1980), Teoría constructivista (Piaget, 1962;Vygotsky, 1962) (Fishbein y Ajzen, 1975), Teoría multietápica del aprendizaje social (Simons et al., 1988), Modelo de desarrollo social (Hawkins et al., 1992), Modelo evolutivo (Kandel, 1980), Teoría de la conducta problema (Jessor y Jessor, 1977), Teoría del autorrechazo (Kaplan, 1996), Teoría de la búsqueda de sensaciones (Zuckerman, 1979) (Fishbein y Ajzen, 1975), Modelo de desarrollo social (Hawkins et al., 1992), Modelo evolutivo (Kandel, 1980), Teoría constructivista (Piaget, 1962;Vygotsky, 1962), Teoría del aprendizaje social (Bandura, 1977a) (Bandura, 1977a), Modelo evolutivo (Kandel, 1980) (Jessor y Jessor, 1977), Modelo evolutivo (Kandel, 1980) n.e. n.e. ...

Towards a General Theory of Crime
  • Citing Chapter
  • January 1988

... There has been some debate as to whether cybercrime should be viewed through the same lenses as traditional crime-"old wine in new bottle" [39,40]-or a new crime type-"new wine, no bottles" [41]-requiring new theoretical explanations [42,43]. While this debate continues, researchers have attempted to establish the scientific value and relevance of a number of different traditional theories emanating from the field of criminology, psychology, and sociology, including, for example, the General Theory of Crime (GTC) [44], Routine Activity Theory (RAT) [45], Social Learning Theory (SLT) [46,47], Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) [48,49], Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (RST) [50], and flow theory [51,52]. These efforts were followed by the establishment of more contemporary theories in cyberpsychology, such as the Online Disinhibition Effect (ODE) [53]. ...

A General Theory of Crime
  • Citing Book
  • March 1990

... Lastly, among demographic characteristics, only age achieved a significant influence on survival time. Respondents who were older at release had longer survival times, echoing the validity of the age-crime curve (Hirschi & Gottfredson, 2008;Sweeten et al., 2013). With the other covariates in the model, neither gender nor race were found to have significant predictor power on survival time. ...

15 Critiquing the Critics: The Authors Respond
  • Citing Chapter
  • May 2008

... Help us advertise the journal through your networks and everyday conversations with colleagues. We need to achieve a critical mass of quality publications and broaden our readership to normalize global thinking rather than treating it as a "sub"-discipline or an appendage to criminology (Gottfredson, 2021). ...

The Essential Role of Cross-national Research in Assessing Theories of Crime: Illustrations from Modern Control Theory

International Criminology

... The Control theory of crime emphasizes why people do not commit crimes. Prominent here are Travis Hirschi and Michael Gottfredson [26]. According to their thesis, people refrain from committing crimes because of the controls/restraints placed on them, which prevent them from committing crimes even when they may have the urge or temptation to do so. ...

The Generality of Deviance.
  • Citing Article
  • March 1995

Contemporary Sociology A Journal of Reviews

... In addition, this research project evaluates criminal variety. Criminal variety (or versatility) is considered to be one of the most robust indicators of criminal behavior, because, as highlighted by some authors (Hirschi & Gottfredson, 2002;Sanches et al., 2016;van Ruitenburg & Ruiter, 2023), it integrates both frequency and severity of various deviant behaviors. Moreover, self-reported data on criminal variety may offer a more accurate view of criminal careers when compared to official records of criminal convictions . ...

Control Theory and the Life-Course Perspective
  • Citing Chapter
  • July 2017

... Trotz dieses Fokus auf individuelle Faktoren, die kriminelles Verhalten begünstigen, wurde das Konzept der Persönlichkeitseigenschaften -das heißt, relativ stabile Muster im Denken, Fühlen und Verhalten -in der krimi-1 Die Kriminologie unterscheidet traditionell zwischen Kriminalität und Straftat. Ersteres bezieht sich auf die Neigung von Menschen zu kriminellem Verhalten, Letzteres auf das tatsächliche Ereignis, währenddessen kriminelles Verhalten gezeigt wird (Hirschi & Gottfredson, 2017). nologischen Forschung weitestgehend vernachlässigt. ...

The Distinction between Crime and Criminality
  • Citing Chapter
  • July 2017

... Chapter 1 purports to put ADV in a developmental context, and chapter 4 notes that the risk for IPV peaks at ages 16-18 (p. 73), but the entire book ignores discussion of the age-crime curve in criminology (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 2001), suggesting that all crime peaks in adolescence. Placed in this context, the research finding is not so much noteworthy or interesting as epi-phenomenological. ...

The True Value of Lambda Would Appear to be Zero: An Essay on Career Criminals, Criminal Careers, Selective Incapacitation, Cohort Studies, and Related Topics
  • Citing Chapter
  • July 2017

... On one hand, we can comment on such result stating that among readiness for aggression patterns those describing habitual and socially determined aggressive acts better correlated with prejudice than others kinds of traits responsible for impulsive actions and lack of appropriate emotional control. In fact, reading from past research (Gottfred & Hirshi, 1990;Jessor & Jessor, 1977), we know that prejudice towards ethnic and racial out-groups may associate with developmental maladjustment or general problem-behavior syndrome. Accordingly, manifestations of extreme prejudice could be correlated to a larger pattern of antisocial behavior (Kiesner, Maass, Cadinu, & Vallese, 2003) in which high levels of cognitive intentional aspect of aggression may as well be included (Shaffer, Meyer-Bahlburg, & Stokman, 1981). ...

In Pursuit of A General Theory of Crime
  • Citing Chapter
  • September 2017