Journal of Law and Administrative Sciences

No.16/2021

SUBCULTURAL THEORIES OF DELINQUENCY AND CRIME

Lecturer Adriana luliana STANCU, PhD.

Faculty of Judicial, Social and Political Sciences,
"Dunarea de Jos" University of Galati, Romania
adriana.tudorache@ugal. ro

Abstract
Strain theorists explain criminal behaviour as a result of the frustrations suffered by lower-class individuals
deprived of legitimate means to reach their goals. Cultural deviance theorists assume that individuals
become criminal by learning the criminal values of the groups to which they belong. In conforming to their
Own group standards, these people break the laws of the dominant culture. These two perspectives are the
foundation for subcultural theory, which emerged in the mid-1950s and held criminologists attention for over
adecade.
A subculture is asubdivision within the dominant culture that has its own norms, beliefs, and values.
Subcultures typically emerge when people in similar circumstances find themselves isolated from the
mainstream and band together for mutual support. Subcultures may form among members of racial and
ethnic minorities, among prisoners, among occupational groups, among ghetto dwellers. Subcultures exist
within a larger society, not apart from it. They therefore share some of its values. Nevertheless, the lifestyles
of their members are significantly different from those of individuals in the dominant culture.
Keywords: suboultural, delinquency, criminal, behaviour.

Subcultural theories of delinquency and crime

ubeutural theories in criminology have been developed to account for
delinquency among lower-class males, especially for one of its most important
expressions the teenage gang.) According to subcultural theorists, delinquent
subcultures, like all subcultures, emerge in response to special problems that members
of the dominant culture donot face. heories developedby Albert Cohen and by Richard
Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin are extensions of the strain, social disorganization, and
differential association theories. They explain why delinquent subcultures emerge in the
first place (strain), whythey take a particular form (social disorganization), and how they
are passed on from one generation to the next (differential association). ]
The explanations of delinquency developed by Marvin Wolfgang and Franco
Ferracutiand by Walter Miller are somewhat different from those mentioned above. These

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theorists do not suggest that delinguency begins with failure to reach middle-class goals.
Their explanations are rooted in culture conflict theory. The subculture of violence thesis
argues that the value systems of some subcultures demand the use of violence in certain
social situations. This norm, which affects daily behaviour, conflicts with conventional
middle-class norms. Along the same lines, Miller suggests that the characteristics of
lower-class delinquency reflect the value system of the lower-class culture and that the
lower-class values and norms conflict with those of the dominant culture. [2]
Although Millei contends that the lower-class culture as a whole - not a subculture
within it - is responsible for criminal behaviour in urban slums, his theory is appropriate to
our discussion because it demonstrates how the needs of young urban males are met by
membership in a street garng. Miller's street gangs, like those of Cohen and of Cloward
and Ohlin, condone violent criminal activity as one of the few means of attaining status in
aslum. [3]

The middle-class measuring rod

Albert Cohen was a student of Robert Merton and of Edwin Sutherland, both of
whom had made convincing arguments about the causes of delinquency. Sutherland
persuaded Cohen that differential association and the cultural transmission of criminal
norms led to criminal behaviour. From Merton he learned about structurally induced
strain)Cohen combined and expanded these perspectives to explain how the delinquent
subculture arises,where it is found withiF the social structure, and why it has the particular
characteristics that it does. [4]
According to Cohen, delinquent subcultures emerge in the slum areas of larger
American cities. They are rooted in class differentials in parental aspirations,hild-rearing
practices, and classroom standards. The relative position of a youngster's family in the
sooial structure determines the problens the child will have to face throughout life.
{Lower-class families who have never known a middle-class lifestyle, for example,
cannot socialize their children in a way that prepares them to enter the middle class. The
children grow up with poor communication skills, lack of commitment to education, and
an inability to delay gratification. Schools present a articular problenm. There, lower-class
children are evaluated by middle-class teachers on the basis of a middleclass measuring
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rod. The measures are based on such
manners, respect for property, and middle-class values as self-reliance, go0d
children fall far short of the standardslong-range planning. By such measures, lower-class
they must meet if they are to
with middleclass children. Cohen compete
argues that they experience status successfully
strain, to which they respond by frustration and
adopting one of three roles: corner boy, college boy, or
delinquent boy.
Corner boy, college boy, delinquent boy
Corner boys try to make the best of a bad
situation. The corner boy hangs out in
the neighbourhood with his peer
group, spending the day in some group
gambling athletic competition. He receives support from
or activity such as
his peers and is very loyal to
them. Most lower-class boys become corner boys.
live a
Eventually they get menial jobs and
conventional lifestyle.
There are very few college boys. These boys
class standards, but their chances for
continually strive to live up to middle
success are limited because of academic and social
handicaps.
Delinquent boys band together to form a subculture in which they can define
in ways that to them seem attainable) status
Cohen claims that even though these lower-class
youths set up their own norms, they have internalized the
norms of the dominant class
and they feel anxious when they go against these
norms. To deal with this conflict, they
resort to reaction formation, a mechanism that relieves
anxiety through the process of
rejectingwith abnormal intensity what one wants but cannot obtain.
These boys turn the
middle-class norms upside down, thereby making conduct right in their subculture
precisely because it is rong by the norms of the larger culture.
Consequently, their delinquent acts serve no useful purpose. They do not steal
things to eat them, wear them, or sell them. In fact, they often
discard or destroy what
they have stolen. They appear to delight in the discomfort of others and in
breaking
taboos. Their acts are directed against people and property at random, unlike the
goal
oriented activities of many adult criminal groups. The subculture is typically
characterized
by short-run hedonism, pure pleasure-seeking, with no planning or
deliberation about
what to do, where, or when. The delinquents hang out on the street corner until
someone
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gets an idea; then they act
impulsively, without considering the
consequences. The
group's autonomy is all- important. Its members are loyal to
each other and resist any
attemptS on the part of family, school, or community to restrain their
behaviour.
Tests of Cohen's theory
Criminological researchers generally agree that Cohen's theory is responsible for
major advances in research on delinguency. J5] Among them are researchers who have
Tound a relationship between delinquency and socialstatus in our society. Much evidence
also supports Cohen's assumption that lower-class children perform more poorly in
school than middle-class children. [6] Teachers often expect them to perform less ably
than their middle-class students, and this expectation is one of the components of poor
performance.
Researchers have demonstrated that poor performance in school is related to
delinquency. When Travis Hirschi studied more than 4000 California schoolchildren, he
found that youths who were academically incompetent and performed poorly in school
came to dislike school. Disliking it, they rejected its authority; rejecting its authority, they
committed delinguent acts. [7] Delbert Elliott and Harwin Voss also investigated the
relationship between schooland delinquency.They analysed annual school performance
and delinquency records of 2000 students in California from ninth grade to 1 year after
the expected graduation date. Their findings indicated that those who dropped out of
school had higher rates of delinquency than those who graduated. They also found that
academic achievement and alienation from school were closely related to dropping out of
school. [8]
From analysis of the dropout-delinquency relationship among over 5000 persons
nationwide, G. Roger Jarjoura concluded that while dropouts were morelikely to engage
in delingquent acts than graduates, the reason was not always simply the fact that they
had dropped out. Droppingout because of a dislike for school, poor grades, or financial
reasons was related to future involvement in delinquency; dropping out because of
problems at home was not. Dropping out for personal reasons such as marriage or
pregnancy was significantly related to subsequent violent offending. [9] All these findings
support Cohen's theory. Other findings, however, do not.
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In a study of 12,524 students in Davidson County, Tennessee, Albert Reiss and

Albert Rhodes found only a slight relationship between delinquency and status
deprivation. (10]This conclusion was supported by the research of Marvin Krohn and his
associates. (11]Furthermore, several criminologist's ha e challenged Cohen's claim that
delinquent behaviour is purposeless. They contend that much delinquent behaviour is
serious and calculated, and often engaged in for profit. [12] John Kitsuse and David
Dietrick have also questioned the consistency of the theory: Cohen argues that the
behaviour of delinguent boys is a deliberate response to middle-class opinion,yet he also
argues that the boys do not care about the opinions of middle-class people. (13]

Evaluation of Cohen's theory

Researchers have praised and criticized Cohen's work. Cohen's theory answers a
number of questions left unresolved by the strain and cultural deviance theories. lt
explains the origin of delinquent behaviour and why sonme youths raised in the same
neighbourhoods and attending the same sohools do not become involved in delinquent
subcultures. His concepts of status deprivation and the middle-class measuring rod have
been useful to researchersYet his theofy does not explain why most delinquents
eventually become law-abiding even though their position in the class structure remains
relatively fixed) some criminologists also question whether youths are driven by some
serious motivating force or whether they are simply out on the streets looking for fun. [14]
Moreover, if delinquent subcultures result from the practice of measuring lower-class boys
by a middle-class measuring rod, how do we account for the growing number of
middleclass gangs?
Other questioHs concern the difficulty of trying to test the concepts of reaction
formation, internalization of middle-class values, and status deprivation, among others.
To answer some of his critics, Cohen, with his colleague James Short,expanded the idea
of delinquent subcultures to include not only lower-class delinquent behaviour but also
such variants as middle-class delinquent subcultures and female delinquents. [15] Cohen
took Merton's strain theory a step further by elaborating on the development of delinquent
behaviour. He described how strain actually creates frustration and status deprivation,
which in turn foster the developmentof an alternative set of values that give lower-class
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