ABSTRACT
The authors provide an overview of general strain theory and additionally translate the theory into a mechanisms sketch. The authors argue that general strain theory’s substantivalist approach leads it to have numerous problems with logical consistency when explaining crime. This is the result of the theory’s use of arbitrary general categories to classify the various factors that statistically moderate the relationship between negative affect and criminal behavior, categories that are not tied to any: (1) underlying property of a working entity; (2) activity; or (3) overall mechanism. Thus, many of the factors located within each category of moderator are artificially lumped together in ways that produce tautologies within the theory, such as the concept of low constraint located within the category of dispositions for criminal coping and the concept of social skills located within the category of ability to legally cope. The authors identify the various ways in which learning and role-taking behavior underlie the mechanistic interpretation of general strain theory, and thus offer a means for overcoming the framework’s longstanding limitations.
