Unit 4 SCLY4 - Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods; Stratification and Differentiation with Theory and Methods
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Summary Subculture Theories of Crime
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Unit 4 SCLY4 - Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods; Stratification and Differentiation with Theory and Methods
Institution
AQA
This document discusses multiple sociological perspectives on the causes of crime and the formations of different subcultures in order to allow this. Includes feminism, marxism, left-realism, and functionalism.
Unit 4 SCLY4 - Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods; Stratification and Differentiation with Theory and Methods
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Subcultural theories
Subculture definition – a group with different norms and values to the rest of society.
Subcultural theories of crime explain that certain groups of people commit crimes because they see
crime as ‘normal’ and part of their everyday life.
Many subcultural theories focus on young criminals. Some of these theories believe that crime
statistics are accurate. They focus on explaining young w/c, male crime.
Criticisms – there are other subcultural theories which disagree that only the w/c and males
form subcultures.
Functionalist Subcultural theories
Cohen – ‘Delinquent Boys, The Culture of The Gange’ – 1955, Status Frustration
Cohen believed that delinquency (youth crime) was a group response and he wanted to try to explain
crimes that had no financial gain e.g., vandalism and joyriding.
Cohen believed that working-class males are most likely to commit delinquent acts as they lack the
opportunities (due to lack of education and ‘dead-end jobs’) to achieve the goal of financial success
set by society.
Cohen believed that in this situation the boys experience status frustration – they feel that they are
looked down upon by the rest of society and are denied any status/respect by mainstream society.
This is particularly true of how they feel at school;’, as school is one of the main ways that people can
get status from teachers and being hard working and intelligent. However, working-class males are
often labelled as unintelligent troublemakers by teachers and fellow students. Their solution to this
situation is to form a subculture where status is gained by being a criminal. The more criminal
someone is in the group, the more respect they get.
Criticism – some have argued that most delinquents don’t care what mainstream society
thinks about them and don’t want respect from others.
Cloward and Ohlin – ‘Delinquency and Opportunity’ – 1961
Cloward and Ohlin agree with Merton that w/c people turn to crime when they are in anomie.
However, they say that not all w/c people can become rich through crime so they must form other
types of subcultures. They believe that there is an illegitimate opportunity that runs alongside the
legitimate opportunity to achieve success.
Criticism - does everyone in society share the goal of financial success e.g., hippies reject
financial success.
They believe that there are three subcultures that the w/c can form when they can't get rich through
education and hard work.
1) The Criminal Subculture – w/c people do make money from crime. This only exists in areas
where there is a stable w/c community with a hierarchy of adult criminals. They then act as
role models for the younger w/c males, as they have become rich through crime. There is a
career stricture for criminals.
2) The Conflict Subculture – in areas with a challenging population it's not possible to have a
criminal subculture so a conflict subculture emerges. This is where frustration at the failure
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