Subcultural Strain Theories 2

Lesson Objectives

• Recap Cohen’s Status Frustration and Alternative Status Hierarchy explanations of crime

• Introduce Cloward and Ohlin’s theory of crime committed by young people

• Evaluate this subcultural theory

Last Lesson Recap

• What reasons are there for young men committing more crimes than any other group?

• What is Status Frustration and why does it occur?

• How does Alternative Status Hierarchy explain delinquency?

• What are some of the evaluation points of Cohen’s theory?

Cloward and Ohlin: 3 subcultures

• Agree with Merton that WC youths are denied legitimate opportunities to achieve and that deviance stems from the response to this.

• However not everyone adapts to lack of legitimate opportunities by turning to innovation (utilitarian crime). Some resort to violence, others to drugs

Peoples’ opportunities to be deviant are different: not everyone gets the same chances to be crooks; some have better opportunities to enter into a criminal career, particularly if they have access to a criminal subculture.

Can you take my son under your wing? I want him to know

everything there is to know about protection

racketeering.

The key reasons for these differences is not only unequal access to the legitimate opportunity structure, but unequal access to illegitimate opportunity structures e.g. not everyone who fails at school can become a successful safecracker

Depending on their access to the illegitimate opportunity structure, young people can enter into one of three deviant subcultures:

Criminal subcultures are established and organized criminal networks which provide a learning environment for young criminals from criminal role models. They are largely concerned with utilitarian crime that derives financial rewards.

Conflict subcultures develop in areas of limited access to either the legitimate or the illegitimate opportunity structures.

There is little organized adult crime to provide an apprenticeship in criminality

These are usually areas of high turnover of population and have little social unity or informal social control.

Gang violence is a predominant response.

Retreatist subcultures have failed to succeed in both the legitimate and illegitimate opportunity structures and are therefore double failures.

Their activities centre mainly around illegal drug abuse.

I’ve no qualifications, no job and no future in the normal world...

And we’re too soft and stupid to be

gangsters. So we just get wasted instead.

What similarities and differences are there between Cloward’s and Ohlin’s

retreatist subculture and Merton’s idea of a retreatist adaptation

• Members of different types of deviant subculture might engage in different acts of deviant behaviour.

• In small groups, discuss which of the following offences you think would be most likely to be committed by members of ‘criminal’, ‘conflict’ or ‘retreatist’ subcultures.

• Are there some offences that might be committed by members of all three subcultures?

Vandalism illegal possession of knivesusing ‘crack’ cocainecar theftillegal possession of gunsrobbery with violencetaking ecstasy

hooliganismstreet fightingtheft from shopsburglarydealing in stolen goodsmurderjoy ridingdealing in drugs

EvaluationLike Merton and Cohen, Cloward and Ohlin ignore

crimes of the wealthy and the wider power structure and over predict the amount of W/C crime.

Unlike Cohen they try to explain different types of W/C deviance in terms of different subcultures. However they draw the boundaries too sharply between the different types. Actual subcultures often show characteristics of more than one ‘type’ (can you think of any examples?)

Like Cohen’s theory, Cloward and Ohlin’s is a reactive one- they explain deviant subcultures as forming in reaction to the failure to achieve mainstream success goals. This wrongly assumes that everyone starts off sharing these same goals

Walter Miller- lower class has its own independent subculture separate from mainstream culture with its own values. This culture does not value success in the first place so its members are not frustrated by failure. He agrees that deviance is widespread in lower class but argues this arises out of an attempt to achieve their own goals not mainstream ones (focal concerns)among middle class people

Burke identifies criticisms of their work also:

1) the idea of the criminal subculture is based on gangs in Chicago in the 1920s and 30s so isn’t particularly applicable to modern British society;

2) the idea of retreatist subcultures is a ‘grossly simplistic’ explanation of drug abuse which is actually really common

What have Recent Strain Theorists suggested?

Page 78

Overview of Key Sociologists• Create a glossary of what the key sub

cultural sociologists have said.

• Summaries each of them in no more than 25 words.

Use subcultural explanations to explain

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/02/2007_26_wed.shtml

MIC: Gang Leader for A Day

1. Summarise using the key words below:

2. Revision Sheet

KEY CONCEPT: legitimate opportunity structure; illegitimate opportunity

structure; criminal subcultures; conflict subcultures; retreatist

subcultures; utilitarian crime; non-utilitarian crime.

Quick Check Q’s Page 79