Subcultural theories of crime – revision notes with evaluative points
Overall evaluation of subcultural perspectives of crime
(-) Most of the research is based on statistics, which interpretivists would say that the findings are therefore invalid.
(-) Matza (1964) -> said that much of the research into gangs is deterministic as it implies that once someone is in a gang they are unable to escape, which is therefore ignoring free will.
- Matza instead came up with the theory of delinquency and drift,
- arguing that many people drift in and out of criminal activity rather than staying committed to a particular criminal subculture.
- Delinquents use techniques of neutralisation to justify their behaviour:
- Denial of responsibility – where the culprit behavior owns-up to doing wrong, but claims they had no choice—”he made me” excuse
- Denial of injury – culprit acknowledges doing the wrong action, but argues nobody was harmed, so what’s the problem
- Blaming the victim – acknowledging people were hurt by our actions, but it was the victim’s fault because they deserved it
- Condemn the condemners – where people abdicate responsibility onto those blaming them
- Appealing to a higher loyalty – where, for example, a gang member might claim their criminal act was undertaken because of their loyalty to their gang
- and Matza suggests that most young people do express guilt for their actions showing that they do hold some mainstream values.
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