The Social Control Theory: Why Do People Become Criminals

There are many reasons that people become criminals, whether it is their choice or not is unknown. There are many different theories and philosophies on why people do what they do, but the most reasonable, and valid of them are the Social Learning Theory, Biological Factors, and the Social Conflict Theory; whereas Strains Theory, and The Social control theory, are not as relative to modern day criminals. These are the most realistic of all of the theories, because with even one of these thing you are more likely to commit at crime, let alone if you get a combination of them. The Social Learning Theory states that "we learn behaviors, which is then maintained or extinguished by the reward or punishment we associate it with."(CJ book) This is basically saying that we learn behaviors from others and chose to either keep those behaviors, and live the lives of the people around us, or go down with the punishments. …show more content…
The social conflict theory states "views that criminals behavior as the product of the conflict between the wealthy and powerful on the one hand, and the poor and powerless on the other."(CJ book) This basically means that the powerful people in the world will always have conflict with other powerful people, and the poor and powerless will fight with each other because they have nothing but that in common. These are the three valid theories and factors in explaining criminal