Analysis Of Robert Merton Theory Of Anomie

Robert Merton theory of anomie explains robbery as an instrumental crime and tells us the goals we should desire to attain like culture goals. Our culture defines and regulates the legitimate means to achieve these goals. His explanation is in macro perspective such that crime is rooted in the social structure, not the individual because we are told what goals we should achieve but we do not have the same opportunities to the legitimate means. There is a divide in cultural goals valued by society and the structural means available to a given individual to achieve them. There has to be a goal that everyone wants but that society values like financial success. For anomie to occur the goal becomes more important than how you get it. Society has

There is an obsession to economic success in American society, this occurred when he had a desperate need for money. However, after his first robbery he realized how easy it was to commit this crime, therefore, this motivated him to keep going. “Everytime I did one, I’d say this is my last one” (pg. 9). This does not explain expressive behaviour, the offender did not even require such accommodations for the necessity to survive; rather he was greedy. His decision to rob a bank was not because he went through negative emotions or depression but because of the desperation for the need of money to take care of his family. In strain theory anger is the primary motivation to committing crime. This offender continued to rob banks even when he had more than enough money to live with but he continued because it made him happy and spent carelessly. His motivation to start was mostly instrumental which supports Merton’s anomie theory and fails the strain theory because there was no negative expressive state that lead to him committing robbery. On the other hand, a criticism of strain theory is that it over-determines for a lot of expressive crimes because not everyone who has high negative emotions or angry is going to commit robbery or a

However, his fight with his brother resulted in his job loss, which motivated him to look somewhere else to reach his goal to pay back the drug dealers. His motivation became strong when he read a lot about bank robbery in articles and decided to do it because of the simplicity of the crime. The loss of his job is instrumental which turned into expressive due to the negative state he was going through with his breakup and owing money, “I owed about $7000 to $8000 dollars for drugs” (pg. 62). Cloward and ohlin state that crime is not a matter of will. This applies to this offender because he did not turn to crime because he wanted to, but because he did not have the legitimate means to pay back his drug dealer. This resulted in strain because he could not think clearly and he chose illegitimate means by robbing a bank and his negative expressive behaviour to achieve his