Crime and Delinquency Subculture

Crime and delinquency subculture reflects on culture patterns surrounding crime and juvenile delinquency. It is created not only by individuals, but as one culture, the American culture. Subculture is derivative of, but different from some larger referential cultures. This term is used to share systems of norms, values, individual, groups and the cultural system itself. Criminal or delinquent subcultures indicate systems of norms, values, or interest that support criminal or delinquent behavior. That's why many juveniles are linked to the same criminal acts as youngsters. They tend to follow a pattern that is expected in their age group, like stealing. Young people experience their opportunity as being blocked out. They engage in collective actions and adapt pro crime values that reinforce their delinquency.

In a book by cloward and Lloyd they state that "The youngster who is motivated by a sense of injustice generally commits his first act of deviance in a crime of uncertainty and fear of disapproval". This statement sounds like appreciation among delinquents is required to sustain satisfaction in their subcultures (p 161).

In criminal subculture the young drug dealers selling drugs was a way to be somebody, to get a head in life and to acquire things like jewelry, clothing, and cars, the symbols of wealth, power and respect. All the things delinquents want at a young age. Crime becomes meaningful to young men and women when they interact with one another and when they participate in youth culture (Sullivan, 1989). Youth violence is considered to be a serious contemporary problem, yet many delinquents are treated as an adult if the crime is function as an adult act.

I find this interesting because may delinquents share the same formality of values and norms that make up there culture. Every young male or female will have experienced some kind of influential crime. What one has done so will the other, that's how I put it.

While delinquent subculture typically are associated with a broad range of illegal behaviors, among delinquent groups and subculture there is great difference in the nature and strength of group norms, values, and interests. Much of theses behaviors of highly delinquent crimes are results from the act of group processes rather than group norms. Like gangs for instants, they give fairly little of its group life to the pursuit of their behavior. When gangs participate in crime episodes, some members of the gang don't become involved. According to a article I read by Short, he stated that because subculture typically consist of collections of normative orders- rules and practices related to a common value, delinquents that affiliate themselves in gangs are oriented around a single value (such as being "macho") are tended to act that way( p. 36). He also states that individuals who are associated with a particular subculture tend also to be associated with other subcultures.

Some members of delinquent gangs may be the sole carriers of a particular subculture in a particular location, and some are shared. For example conflict subcultures are shared by rival fighting gangs among whom individual and group status involves values related to defense of turf and reputation and norms loyal of these values. Some subcultures oriented to theft and other forms of property crime which they are connected with a particular group. Some property crime involves more organizing and planning in order to succeed. Other crimes such as mugging may involve only one person who shares the same subculture as the larger group. In an article by Terry William's it states that delinquent subcultures contain elements of both youth and adult cultures. It also stated that to speak of youth culture is to symbolize a subculture of the larger adult-dominated and institutionally defined culture (1989). Many of criminal subculture shares a symbolic relationship with their customs, manly the people they involve themselves with. If a person or a group are lower- class then you will see them handing with that group. If they are drug users or drug dealers then you will see the same. Delinquents will fit in were they can get in or shall I say where they feel most wanted.

According to the Cohen's theory he argued that a "crucial condition for the emergence of new cultural forms is the existence in effective interaction with one another and of numbers with similar problems of adjustment" (1955, p59). He also states that similar problems of adjustment can be interpreted to include problems faced by quite conventional people with special interests who find themselves "in the same boat" with others who have the same interests seems especially appropriate to subcultures that embrace vandalism and other delinquent behaviors (p60).

It is obvious to know where criminal and delinquent subcultures come from. Studies show that it is historical in industrialized societies. It originated from social change that began in the sixteenth century. Traditional economic and social relationships were greatly altered with the start of capitalism and industrial revolution in the Western Europe. This awoke large numbers of unemployed people and disrupting communities, families and other groups. Many people roam the countryside, subsisting as best they could off the land or by victimizing travelers. Many then settled in larger cities, again to survive by whatever means including crime. The Schwendingers emphasize that criminal subculture development as a result of structural norms and interests were originated between the period of capitalists and emerging nation- states (Herman 1985). James Coleman and his associates identified more recent social changes that were associated with the rise and spread of youth culture throughout the United States: Baby Boom following the World War II and the increased wealth of young people associated with post-World War II economic prosperity combined to create a huge youth market with great economic power (1974).

In contract to accounts of the origins of Western European youth cultures, Ko-lin Chin traces the development of Chinese youth delinquents in the United States to ancient secret society traditions, and to the more recent Triad societies that formed in the late seventeenth century in China ( 1996). The violence and crime among the Chinese youth in the U.S did not increase dramatically until immigration laws permitted more. While the origins of delinquent subcultures may reside in ancient times, the formation can be explained in macro-level. All macro-level theories make certain assumptions about the individual level of explanation. By documenting the ongoing relationship and actions of an individual or group, one can analyze the process of macro-levels of explanation.

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