[1] The theory was originally developed by criminologists Travis Hirschi and Michael Gottfredson,[2] but has since been subject to a great deal of theoretical debate and a large and growing empirical literature.
[2] Based on the empirical observation of the connection between criminal behavior and age,[5] Hirschi and Gottfredson theorized that an important factor behind crime is individual lack of self-control.
Individual self-control improves with age as a result of many factors: changing biology through hormonal development, socialization and increasing opportunity costs of losing control.
More recent psychological research has retained a notion of self-control as referring to an individual's decision or ability to delay immediate gratification of desires in order to reach larger alternative goals.
[13] A number of empirical studies—including meta-analysis—have confirmed that individual self-control is in fact a strong predictors of crime, when compared to a range of factors at various levels of analysis.