Masculinity of criminality (week 5)

Question 1

What is meant by the concept the ‘masculinity of criminality’?

Answer 1

• The ‘masculinity of criminality’ is an indisputable global phenomenon and is described by the overwhelming dominance of young men represented in crime rates, arrest rates, prisons and before the courts
• Albert Cohen’s book Delinquent Boys was one of the first criminological texts to place the maleness of juvenile delinquency at the centre of criminological analysis
• Cohen’s sees gender ascription or the culture of masculinity, as the underlying root cause of the male dominance of delinquency.
• By providing the opportunity to resist middle-class values, in whose terms working-class boys cannot succeed, the delinquent subculture helps him affirm his masculine identification.
• Cohen asserts ‘that it is class-status conflicts that motivate working-class males to crime, and the fact that delinquency is so symbolically masculine becomes an added extra’