Sub Cultural Theories And Crime

Question 1

Who did a study on the mods and rockers in the 1960s/70s and what did he find

Answer 1

Stanley Cohen
Found that the media had a significant part to play in amplifying deviance which in turn created more mods and rockers and more deviance

Question 2

How does Cohen criticise Merton on delinquents

Answer 2

1) delinquency is a collective not individual response

2) Merton Gauls to account for non utilitarian crime such as vandalism and joy riding

Question 3

What did Cohen say about working class youths and status frustration

Answer 3

When they realise they are unable to achieve their goals they develop status frustration.
Goals are rejected and new deviant goals and values are created and a delinquent subculture is formed

Question 4

Criticism of Cohen

Answer 4

Too focused on working class delinquency 
Stephen box claims that rather feeling shame and guilt for their failure youths actually feel resentment against their teachers and middle class youths whose values they don’t share

Question 5

What 3 subcultures do cloward and ohlin identify

Answer 5

1) criminal - emerge in areas where there is an established pattern of organised adult crime children learn from there parents - utilitarian
2) conflict - develop in areas where adolescents have little opps for access to illegitimate opp structures. Responce is often gang violence.
3) retreatist - subcultures around drug use because they have failed to succeed in both legitimate and illegitimate structures. Doubled failures.

Question 6

Criticism of cloward and ohlin

Answer 6

They haven’t provided a convincing explanation for each type of delinquency

Taylor Walton and young argue that some subcultures are not reacting to their own failure but still reject the norms of mainstream society