Jack Roller Flashcards
Autobiographies
Are now less common, and often include a strong theme of rehabilitation (Boyle 1977, O’Connor 1976).
No book can reproduce reality,
the writer selects and interprets.
Having turned to crime, the youth’s life is often described in terms which his relationships with other people lack the fundamental human qualities of loyalty and honour.
He lacks any normal, rational caution.
The ‘LURE’ of the underworld
- *An inducement to pleasure or gain**
(enticement) ,
for instance,
the promise of easy money is always the lure for some people to take up a life of crime like Stanley.
Opportunity theory
Cloward and Ohlin (1960) proposed a model explaining gang delinquency that expanded upon Merton’s anomie theory is called opportunity theory.
They suggested that,
just as the availability of legitimate means varies across social groups, so does access to illegitimate opportunity structures.
Illegitimate opportunity structures, like legitimate ones, presuppose social organisation or integration in order to offer illegal opportunities (Cloward & Ohlin, 1960:173).
According to Cloward and Ohlin, the story of Stanley illustrate a community well-organised for aberrant behaviour:
Stealing in the neighbourhood was a common practice among the children and approved by the parents. Whenever the boys got together they talked about robbing and made more plans for stealing. I hardly knew any boys who did not go robbing.
Opportunity rationale
The criminal solution that Stanley selected were being the Jack-Rollers to get his easy money rather than working without any encouragement, except to take all the money to his greediness stepmother who had no love for him.
This answer reflects the opportunity rationale of Cloward and Ohlin.
To illustrate opportunity structures,
imagine concluding that Stanley is doomed to failure no matter how diligently he work; therefore, he seek an illegal route to success.
Criminal subculture
The ecological studies of Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay and other scholars in the Chicago School laid the groundwork for an analysis of community organisation and disorganisation as elements of opportunity structures.
Edwin Sutherland (1973:211) notes that **“selection and tutelage are the two necessary elements” in becoming a professional theft.**
That is, like Stanley’s case that success within a particular criminal subculture requires access to learning structures to allow demonstration of aptitude and acquisition of the pertinent skills.
Gang delinquency
Concerned with explaining gang delinquency, Cloward and Ohlin identified three different types of gangs: criminal, conflict, and retreatist.
Each gang type represents specific mode of adaptation to perceived anomie.
The criminal gang, similar to Merton’s innovator, aspires to the conventional goals of society.
It access to the legitimate means for achieving success are blocked, but there is an illegitimate opportunity structure, in the form of community organisation for crime, that permits the gang to achieve money and status through illegal or nonconventional means.
An example would be the inner-city youth like Stanley who exposed to older gang members, initially from his stepbrother, who are operating a theft ring.
The youth learns the appropriate behaviour and justifications from these older youths and sees them achieve success through their illegal operations.
As a consequence, the youth joins the gang and ultimately moves up through its ranks.
The “Gang Feature” provided in this story highlights the importance attributed to the availability of legitimate opportunities.
Agnew’s Strain theory
The failure to achieve goals includes blocked opportunity due to a person’s location in the class structure, but it also can involve the failure to realise desired goals due to individual weakness or inadequacies. Like Stanley said, he did not know what to do for his life and where he belonged.
Agnew also suggests that strain may occur when an individual perceives the reward to be inadequate relative to the effort, especially when compared to others. Like Stanley always feel that he was nobody to everyone, even he work to support his stepmother that who had no love for him.
Agnew also postulates that criminal behaviour can result from experiencing stressful life events – both the removal of positively valued stimuli and the exposure to negative stimuli.
The removal of positively valued stimuli such as moving, switching jobs, death of a family member, Agnew argues that such life events can contribute to social strain. Therefore, mentally abuse like neglecting from Stanley’s stepmother towards Stanley also may cause stress that he will ultimately seek to relieve through criminal activities.
The Underworld
These books are amongst the earliest sorts of popular criminology, and purport to describe the practices of criminals, whom they tend to depict as separate social class (Felstead 1923, Gardner 1931, Murphy 1933).
Social disorganization theory
theory that asserts crime occurs in communities with weak social ties and the absence of social control
Social disorganization theory points to broad social factors as the cause of deviance. A person isn’t born a criminal, but becomes one over time, often based on factors in his or her social environment.
Kavitha VRS (2009) It is transparent that there is no single factor responsible for social disorganisation.
Personal or Individual Disorganisation
Elliot and Merrill has defined that
social disorganisation is the process
by which the relationships
between members of a group are dissolved,
like Stanley whom was living in a family consists of broken home that he claims it is similarly as being deserted in his words.
Broken Families
Broken Families represent the breakdown of family
due to parental irresponsibility,
lack of parental affection,
ill-treatment of stepmother,
single parent in Stanley’s case.
All these above cited factors significantly loosens family ties and that contributes to the lack of emotional and social support so as leading one commits crime.
Sense of Insecurity
In the broken family,
Stanley falls into deprivation of love,
develops feelings of revolt and hatredness,
that strengths the attitude of insecurity
and finally run away from home
and indulge in the sphere of crime.
Beggary
Beggary is one of the chief cause of Juvenile delinquency. Child beggars mostly come
from either poor families or broken homes.
These children are betrayed of
the needed love and affection of the parents,
like Stanley.
They crave for the satisfaction of their inner impulses, devises and ambitions.
They choose to become beggars for the same. As to Stanley said that he was too proud to beg as a professional.
Family Causes
Men were the bread winners of the family
since time immemorial
and they were the ones who
would go hunting for food.
If a family loses a bread winner like Stanley lost his father, the social organisation is adversely affected.
