C&D - Subcultural explanations of crime and deviance

• Why young working class people commit crime, ie. juvenile delinquency.
• Malicious youth crime.
• Subcultural theory generally assumes that youth crime is not motivated by material or financial gain in the same way as crimes committed by older people.
• 'Subculture' - a culture that exists alongside the main or dominant culture of society.

Albert Cohen:

• Central goal for many members of society is the pursuit of status - value and respect them.
• Juvenile delinquency is caused by three inter related factors:
• (1) Inadeqaute socialisation by parents - working class boys are not socialised by their parents into the sorts of values and norms that are required for academic success at school.
• (2) Poor experience of schooling - working class boys under achieve and are allocated to bottom sets or streams in which they can clearly see that school does not value them.
• (3) Status frustration - working class boys internalising a strong sense of low self esteem.
• They feel very alienated and frustrated and angry at the way that schools, teachers and society treat them.

The subcultural response to status frustration:

• React to this by developing gangs or subcultures which:
• (1) Reverse the norms and values of the dominant culture, eg. they might deliberatley break school rules.
• (2) Celebrate aspects of working class culture by exaggerating behaviour such as toughness and masculinity.
• The reward for this is peer group status and respect.
• Gangs award status and respect to their members on the basis of anti-social, violent and anti-authoritarian behaviour ie. juvenile delinquent behaviour.
• This compensated for the failure of school and society to offer them alternative forms of legitimate status and respect.
• Cohen blames both working class culture and schools/society for juvenile delinquency.
• Society should take some of the blame too because it denies these youth any form of status, respect or sense of value.

Evaluation of Cohen:

• Little evidence that working class youth actually want the type of status that is achieved through education or jobs.
• Most working class boys actually conform at school.
• Cohen ignores working class girls.
• Cohen seems to accept without question the criminal profile painted by the official criminal statistics that working class youth are the main social problem.

Walter Miller's version of subcultural theory:

• Rooted in the values and norms of working class subculture.
• This culture has deviant characteristics which…