Reiss, Albert J., Jr.: Personal and Social Controls and Delinquency

David C. May

Albert J. Reiss, Jr., was one of the pioneers in the areas of crime and criminology. Although Reiss may be best known for his contribution to social control theory, he also wrote important works in a number of areas such as policing, self-report surveys, male prostitution, and corporate crime. Nevertheless, his most important contribution to the field of criminology may have been his work in the area of social control theory. In 1951, in his article “Delinquency as the Failure of Personal and Social Controls” in the American Sociological Review , he introduced the ideas of personal and social controls and the important roles they played in reducing delinquency. He expanded on those ideas in another article the following year in the same journal. These concepts became important precursors for what later became known as social control theory and remain relevant to the field of theoretical criminology more than half ...

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