Agnew, Robert: Integrated Theory

The beginning of the 21th century was an exciting period in which to study the causes of crime. Violence in the United States, particularly among juveniles, had dropped precipitously from its levels in the early 1990s and criminologists vigorously sought an explanation. Data with which to test classic theories such as social disorganization theory had recently become available for the first time and were generating empirical support for ideas that had not previously been tested. Recent revisions of learning theory and control theory had sparked heated debate about both the causes of crime and the most effective methods with which to identify those causes empirically. Strain theory had begun a major resurgence in the literature and was generating renewed research in its own right.

However, while these and other such developments generated new interest in the causes of crime, it was becoming increasingly difficult for practitioners to keep up with the latest literature, for academics to summarize it in a coherent way, and for students to leave criminology courses with a straightforward answer to a seemingly simple question: Why do criminals offend? Robert Agnew's general theory of crime represents a leading effort to integrate prior theory and research for the purpose of answering this question in a manner that is relatively succinct but simultaneously complete.