Clarifying Control in Criminology: A Proposal for Six Interacting Controls of Crime.

The article focuses on clarifying the concept of informal social control in criminology, which has been vague and inconsistently defined for over 40 years. It identifies three main sources of this vagueness: the lack of a clear definitional template, the overly broad and incomplete formal–informal dichotomy, and the failure to account for interactions among controls. To address these issues, the authors propose a definitional template comprising six elements (agents, actions, objects, reasons, powers, and domain) and introduce six distinct types of control—state, place management, organization, intimate, self, and stranger—that provide greater specificity than the traditional formal–informal distinction. The article also emphasizes that these controls often interact in complex ways, illustrated through real-world examples, and argues that clearer definitions and understanding of control types are essential for scientific study and social justice considerations in crime prevention.