Focusing on such social forces as families and schools that could control young people, it examines these forces' failures which allow misconduct to occur. The relationships among these potentially controlling forces are also considered, with emphasis on the sequence in which the failure of one force causes the failure in another force. The analysis is based on data from a variety of sources, including the senior author's questionnaire survey of 4,300 high school sophomores in Missouri and Texas. A discussion of the evolution of the control theory of misconduct covers the nature of adolescence, the history of juvenile delinquency, various indicators of offending, the meanings of self-reports, the nature of control theory, and the way in which it explains different offenses. Biological, environmental, and social variables that are crucial to the occurrence of misconduct are also discussed. An examination of society's mechanisms for dealing with juvenile lawbreaking focuses on the police, the courts, probation, and parole. The text also includes discussions of other important theories of juvenile offending, research issues, case studies, dialogues which dramatize the discussion, and study questions for each chapter. Data tables, subject and author indexes, and a bibliography listing about 750 sources are provided.