Whereas Merton focused on crime as an individual response Cohen (1971) and Cloward and Ohlin (1960) build on Merton’s work, but they focus on the position of groups in the social structure and how these groups adapt in different ways to the strain they face when in achieving social goals. They deal with juvenile delinquency, crime committed by those under the age of 17, as these young people constitute the largest group of criminals and deviants.
Cohen argues that working-class youths feel they are denied status in mainstream society, and they experience status frustration. This is due to them accepting and believing in society’s success goals, but because of failed education, living in deprived areas and limited job opportunities they feel they have little chance to realize these goals by approved means. Instead they develop an alternative distinctive set of values- a delinquent subculture. They replace accepted means of behavior, for instance stealing cars becomes hard work, and instead stride to achieve status and respect from peers that they are denied in wider society. Cohen identifies elements of revenge in this subculture as a way to get back at society for denying them the mainstream goals, and this revenge element explains why a lot of juvenile crime is not motivated by financial gain. Offences such as joy-riding, vandalism and fighting are more motivated by wanting peer acceptance and respect and as a way of getting back at society.
A weak spot in Cohen’s theory is that he assumes that these mainstream goals are deemed to be desirable and greatly accepted by working-class youths and that there delinquent behavior is a response to the goals they can not achieve. Miller (1962) argues against this and suggests that the working-class have always had their own independent culture, and so they are neither rejecting mainstream values nor wanting revenge against society’s goals, as they have never lived by or held them. Matza’s (1964) study on delinquency found that most young people were not committed to delinquent values and instead accepted society’s aims but drifted in and out of delinquency rather than showing commitment to the norms and values. Cohen’s theory does though explain working-class delinquency as a group response and not just as individual’s behavior, as with Merton’s theory. Paul Willis (1979) argued that the creation of deviant sub-cultures amongst working class boys was not simply a response to such things as status denial. Such sub-cultures also represented an organised, realistic, attempt to come to terms with a wider cultural world that had already, by the time they had entered secondary school, earmarked the boys in Willis's study as "failures".
Cloward and Ohlin (1960) agree with some of Cohen’s work but state that it is too simple, they argue that Cohen’s theory does not allow for diversity in the responses given by working-class youths when lack of means means they can not achieve society’s goals. Cloward and Ohlin suggested that the route to delinquency involved one of three subcultures:
Criminal subcultures- In this situation, the young delinquents have access to a criminal subculture. Such subcultures emerge in areas where there is already an organised, adult criminal community. The young delinquents learn from the established, adult criminals who are role models for them. If successful, they rise up the professional criminal hierarchy. Criminal subcultures are in the main involved in utilitarian (useful) crimes, such as theft. This subculture also represents Merton’s Innovators in his strain theory.
Conflict Subculture- Here, conflict subculture develops in areas where there is little opportunity to gain access to a criminal subculture. As such, there is no real opportunity to acquire role models and criminal skills. These areas have a transient population and no 'community spirit'. With no opportunity to achieve success either by lawful or unlawful means, the response is often gang violence as a release for anger and frustration. This represents Merton’s Rebels, as the youths have rejected existing social goals they have created their own within a gang.
Retreatist Subculture- Faced with a failure in both mainstream society and in the crime and gang cultures (a double failure), some lower working-class youths will develop a retreatist subculture where they retreat into drugs and alcoholism. Much like Merton’s Retreatists.
Cloward and Ohlin’s research is insightful as it gives us reasons as to why working-class delinquency happens in different social circumstances. However the difference between the three subcultures is exaggerated, as there is an overlap between them. For example, utilitarian crime occurs in all three subcultures.
Miller didn't see juvenile delinquency as being rooted in the rejection of the middle-class value system, as did other subculture theorists, but in the value system of the lower class. It is this value system that generates delinquent acts. He believes that this lower class group has for centuries possessed their own culture and traditions with a fundamentally different from those in the higher classes. This subculture revolves around issues that Miller calls focal concerns: Toughness, Smartness, Excitement, Fate and Trouble. These values become exaggerated in the lives of young people, as the search for peer-group status leads them into delinquency. It is therefore over-conformity to lower-working-class subculture, rather than the rejection of ruling values, that Miller feels explains working-class delinquency.
Matza’s criticism of subcultural theories was that there was little evidence to demonstrate a distinct set of anti social values. Matza found that most working-class youths don’t engage in regular delinquent activities, these deviants are actually committed to the same values as the rest of society and that they show the same kind of outrage about crime in general as most people do. He pointed out that when caught offending, most delinquents express feeling of guilt, shame and remorse and use what Matza calls ‘techniques of neutralization’. By this he means that offenders neutralise the moral bind of society and they are able to convince themselves that the law does not apply to them on this particular occasion. For example, they were only shoplifted because they wanted a birthday gift for their mother but did not have the money. This shows commitment to mainstream values, not a rejection of them. Matza also suggests that young people drift in and out of delinquency as a way of gaining peer-status, and eventually drift out of it and reach full independent adult status.
A downside to classic theories, such as Merton’s, Cohen’s and Cloward and Ohlin’s, is that they can not always be used to understand modern patterns of crime and deviance. Nigel South (1997) shows this by suggesting that British drug trade is largely based around disorganized crime, much like Cloward and Ohlin’s conflict subculture, but some of the trade is based around professional criminal organization similar to criminal subcultures. Some drug users themselves could be seen as part of a retreatist subculture. So criminality today does not always fit in with the classic theories.
Most theories attempting to explain and develop a pattern in crime and deviance portray the acts negatively, but Durkheim (1982) believed that deviance could act positively and that there were benefits of deviant behavior. Despite the potential threats to social order, he saw some deviance and crime as necessary and beneficial, as it could perform functions in contributing to the well being of society in the following ways:
By strengthening collective values- Societies values can only be help firmly in place if people are reminded of the boundaries between right and wrong. A person going against these values and the consequences of their actions have the effect of reinforcing social control. Such events give the opportunity to condemn deviant behavior and, by punishing criminals, reassert the boundaries of acceptable behavior, and strengthen collective values.
By enabling social change- without deviant behavior new ideas on how to deal with the delinquents would not develop, enabling society to progress and change.
By acting as a ‘safety valve’- Deviance can be a way of expressing anger and frustration at society, avoided wider and more serious challenges to social order.
By acting as a warning device- Deviance can act as a warning as to more serious underlying problems in society. For example, drug addiction, high rates of suicide and truancy from school.
Subcultural theories help to understand that most deviant acts are carried out as some kind of reaction to society’s consensus goals and values, whether this is denial, frustration or revenge from unable to achieve success in the eyes of society. But these theories generally talk about male youths and fail to mention why women commit crime and the subcultures they create as wife, mother, and nurturer.
