Subcultural Theory Of Crime

This outline will serve as a detailed road map as to how the paper will progress from this stage onwards and the concepts and theories explored within. First, this paper will begin with outlining the historical social context under which subcultural theories of crime came into being in the mid twentieth century in North America. Second, this paper will begin with the first posed subcultural theory of crime; Delinquent boys by Albert Cohen. Third, Skyes and Matza’s, ‘Techniques of Neutralization’ as a theory will be examined and commented on. Fourth, Walter B. Miller’s subcultural theory of crime on Lower-class focal concerns will be examined. Fifth, Ohlin and Cloward’s theory on ‘Delinquency and Opportunity’ will be looked at. Finally, the

As a result, the 1950s and 1960s in the United States were considered to prominently reflect the socially conservative values held by the middle class and more or less considered other classes, specifically the working class to be a nuisance and counterproductive within society, being the middle class was considered ‘normal’. Industrialization led to urbanization which in turn led to an increased inhabitation in city centers. Although, independent movements such as the civil rights movement pushed for equality amongst citizens, this did little to aid the problems within inner cities where residents were already labelled as deviant by the middle class simply due to the social and economic standings, hence the ‘lower class’ was the scapegoat who was blamed for the rise in crime within cities and were deemed to be deviant as a group. The popular view held that, poor or working class individuals are responsible for the situations they are currently in and this is because they do not work hard enough (William and McShane,

Numerous academics of the time aimed to understand the crime trends in relation to juvenile population, hence this gave rise to subcultural theories of crime. As previously mentioned, the Chicago school of study is credited for creating an environment where subcultural theories of crime where able reflect and explain to some extent why crime exists with certain groups. Edward Sutherland’s differential association (1939) and Robert Merton’s (1938) anomie and strain theory focus on social structure and social class differences can be seen as a basis for the development of subcultural theories of