ABSTRACT
What You Need to Know
■ Shaw and McKay found that crime and delinquency were concentrated in the center of cities, where lower-SES individuals and immigrants or African Americans lived. The reason they offer for this finding was “social disorganization,” meaning the residents did not exert control, thus allowing crime to flourish.
■ Differential association argues that deviance is learned just as other behavior is learned. Modifications of differential association include differential identification (which adds the idea of learning from images in the media) and differential reinforcement (which argues we learn from the results of our actions).
■ Subcultural theories suggest that youths often act in accordance with a different set of values and beliefs that invariably conflict with the dictates of the larger society, thus leading them to be considered deviant.
■ The techniques of neutralization presented by Sykes and Matza allow youths to violate the law while maintaining a positive self-image as a conforming member of society.
■ Routine activities theory argues that a criminal act requires a motivated offender and a suitable target to coincide where there is an absence of capable guardianship.
■ Strain theory suggests that crime is a logical outcome of the disjunction between the socially prescribed goals and the means available for achieving those goals.
■ General strain theory offers a view that strain can come from a wide array of sources besides simply economic strain and inequality.
■ Hirschi’s social control theory states that “delinquent acts result when an individual’s bond to society is weak or broken.” The bond is composed of attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief.
■ Self-control theory argues that behavior is controlled by factors an individual internalizes early in life. Good self-control keeps an individual from violating the law.
■ The labeling perspective proposes that involvement in the juvenile justice system leads to more deviant behavior by labeling the individual as a deviant and forcing him or her to act in accordance with that label.
■ Attempts to integrate theories into more unified, coherent explanations of deviance have met only limited success in advancing sociological theory.
