Subcultural Theories of Delinquency and Crime
![handle is hein.journals/jladsc16 and id is 135 raw text is: Journal of Law and Administrative Sciences
No.16/2021
SUBCULTURAL THEORIES OF DELINQUENCY AND CRIME
Lecturer Adriana luliana STANCU, PhD.
Faculty of Judicial, Social and Political Sciences,
Dunarea de Jos University of Galati, Romania
adriana.tudorache@ugal.ro
Abstract
Strain theorists explain criminal behaviour as a result of the frustrations suffered by lower-class individuals
deprived of legitimate means to reach their goals. Cultural deviance theorists assume that individuals
become criminal by learning the criminal values of the groups to which they belong. In conforming to their
own group standards, these people break the laws of the dominant culture. These two perspectives are the
foundation for subcultural theory, which emerged in the mid-1950s and held criminologists attention for over
a decade.
A subculture is a subdivision within the dominant culture that has its own norms, beliefs, and values.
Subcultures typically emerge when people in similar circumstances find themselves isolated from the
mainstream and band together for mutual support. Subcultures may form among members of racial and
ethnic minorities, among prisoners, among occupational groups, among ghetto dwellers. Subcultures exist
within a larger society, not apart from it. They therefore share some of its values. Nevertheless, the lifestyles
of their members are significantly different from those of individuals in the dominant culture.
Keywords: subcultural, delinquency, criminal, behaviour.
Subcultural theories of delinquency and crime
Subcultural theories in criminology have been developed to account for
delinquency among lower-class males, especially for one of its most important
expressions - the teenage gang. According to subcultural theorists, delinquent
subcultures, like all subcultures, emerge in response to special problems that members
of the dominant culture do not face. Theories developed by Albert Cohen and by Richard
Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin are extensions of the strain, social disorganization, and
differential association theories. They explain why delinquent subcultures emerge in the
first place (strain), why they take a particular form (social disorganization), and how they
are passed on from one generation to the next (differential association). [1]
The explanations of delinquency developed by Marvin Wolfgang and Franco
Ferracuti and by Walter Miller are somewhat different from those mentioned above. These
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