Hirschi, Travis (1935–)

Travis Hirschi was born on April 15, 1935, in Rockville, Utah. He received his bachelor's degree in 1957 and his master's in 1958 from the University of Utah. In 1968, he earned his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. Hirschi began his academic career in the Sociology Department at the University of Washington, Seattle, as Assistant Professor and later became Associate Professor (1967 to 1971). From Washington, he moved to the University of California at Davis, where he was Professor of Sociology from 1971 to 1977. From 1977 to 1981, Hirschi was Professor of Criminal Justice at the State University of New York at Albany. In 1981, he moved to the Department of Sociology at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and stayed there until his retirement in 1997. Hirschi is currently Regents' Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona.

During his illustrious career, Hirschi wrote four books: Delinquency Research (coauthored with Hanan Selvin, 1967), Causes of Delinquency (1969), Measuring Delinquency (coauthored with Michael Hindelang and Joseph Weis, 1981), and A General Theory of Crime (coauthored with Michael Gottfredson, 1990). He has also served as editor or [Page 202]coeditor on four volumes and has written 32 journal articles, 29 book chapters and forewords, and several book reviews and review essays covering a variety of topics in the study of crime and delinquency. The trademark of Hirschi's body of work is profound theoretical insights coupled with rigorous research methods. Over the last 25 years, Hirschi's work has dominated intellectual discussion and created the research agenda for the field of criminology.

Consider Causes of Delinquency, published in 1969. In this book, Hirschi developed and tested a theory of social control capitalizing on the idea of social bonding. In contrast to then popular delinquency theories that focused on motivations for delinquency, social control theories focused on the restraints and circumstances that prevent delinquency. In Causes, Hirschi presents the delinquent as “relatively free of the intimate attachments, the aspirations, and the moral beliefs that bind most people to a life within the law” (Hirschi, 1969, preface). The theoretical focus then is on the socialization processes that constrain antisocial and delinquent behavior that comes to all individuals naturally. The key question is, why do men obey the rules of society? For Hirschi, delinquency occurs when an individual's bond to society is weak or broken. There are four separate but interrelated elements of an individual's social bond to society: attachment (e.g., affection for and sensitivity to others); commitment (e.g., investment in conventional society); involvement (e.g., the amount of time spent on conventional activities); and belief (e.g., the extent to which people believe they should obey the rules). For example, the more strongly a juvenile is attached to his or her parents or teachers, the less likely he or she will engage in delinquent behavior. Along similar lines, a juvenile that has invested time and effort in conventional activities in school has a “stake in conformity,” and he or she is less likely to jeopardize this investment by engaging in delinquent behavior.

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