ABSTRACT
In order to establish a catalogue of culturally available frames on street crime, this chapter examines the speeches and publications of partisans on various "sides" of the issue. It describes the five basic frames, namely: faulty system, blocked opportunities, social breakdown, media violence, and racist system of crime as ideal types. The Blocked Opportunities perspective on crime has its social scientific roots in Robert K. Merton's 1938 essay "Social Structure and Anomie". Crime, Merton held, results from a disjuncture between socially prescribed goals and the institutionally available means for goal attainment. The Blocked Opportunities frame depicts crime as a consequence of inequality and discrimination, especially as they manifest themselves in unemployment, poverty, and inadequate educational opportunities. Witness the skyrocketing rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births. Witness the indifference of urbanites to the crime that plagues their communities. Family breakdown in the context of urban indifference has loosened the moral and social bonds that in better times discouraged crime.
