Social Control: Age-Graded Social Roles

There are two types of social control: informal and formal. Informal social control refers to the types of control that do not have government intervention. Instead, intervention comes from within the community and life experiences. Key sources of informal social control include age-graded social roles and community groups. Age-graded roles refer to the different social roles and responsibilities that a person takes on at different stages in their life. Throughout their different stages, “responsibilities change in ways that make them more or less likely to commit crime” (Kantachote). In adulthood, people are influenced by marriage, employment, and military service.

It’s hypothesized that age-graded social roles, specifically in adulthood, reduce crime for several reasons. When people get married they have more at stake and experience change in their day-to-day life. Each partner now provides for their other half (and possibly their children) and has less time to spend with their friends due to spousal control. Over time the relationship of the married couple strengthens while the relationship with friends decreases due to less interaction. Further, when people obtain full-time employment, their routines and responsibilities change such that structured routines are created and strong relationships are formed with the employer, resulting in both less free time and high levels of trust and confidence that employees want to maintain causing deviance behavior decline. In addition, when people participate in military service, they now eat, sleep, and work with other military members. Thus, service members learn behaviors and skills that erode deviance
The age-crime curve shows that criminal behavior begins during childhood, peaks during adolescence, and wanes down from early adulthood onward which explains why age-graded social roles cause crime to