Social class and Youth Deviance

Murray

Social Class

Cohen and Cloward and Ohlin

Miller

Status Frustration and deprivation of working class boys


  • Unable to gain mainstream values therefore turn to deviant values to gain status
  • Many working class boys give up on the mainstream values because they find it is too hard of a way to achieve status
  • Working class boys strove to emulate middle-class values and aspirations, but lacked the means to achieve success, leading to status frustration: a sense of personal failure and inadequacy

Not father's- Murray

  • No role model, discipline or a father figure
  • Have deviant set of norms and values based on dependency, criminality, and laziness
  • No father figure meaning that they cannot aspire to a role model so they cannot socialise properly

  • Most youths involved in crime are drawn from the poorest 20% of the population


  • Studies of youth detention centres suggest that less than 10% of persistent offenders come from middle-class backgrounds.

Most anti school subculture, comprised of working class

Need to be cautious- Interactionists


  • Statistics are based on police files which represents an over representation of the working class

Focal concerns


  • Trouble, toughness, excitement, fate and autonomy
  • Challenges the value consensus as working class boys do not try to gain academic sucess
  • Unable to gain success, money and possessions, therefore using deviance to get them
  • 'Blocked opportunities’, meaning that not everyone has the same opportunities such as different education and upbringings therefore having to use deviance
  • Unable to achieve values goals, using criminal behaviour by being innovative, obtaining through illegal behaviour
  • Criminal, conflict and retreatist subcultures

Lead and Young

  • Relative deprivation, Marginalisation and Subculture
  • By comparing themselves to other, they feel deprived causing people to feel pushed to the edges of society, due to feeling powerless causing people to form subcultures to cope with relative dperivation and marginalisation, which can often become deviant.

Cicorel

Becker- Labelling theory


  • A deviant is simply someone to whom a negative label has been successfully applied and deviant behavior is simply behavior that people with more power, label
  • Groups such as young people who lack power act in a particular way, and another group with more power, respond negatively to it and define it as deviant
  • Self forphilling phopecy

Rebelling against capitalism- CCCS

Poverty and Deprivation- Lea and Young

Marginalisation

It may be that the deviant and criminality of the working class become involved is in more likely to be visible and targeted by the police and criminal justice institutions whereas deviants and criminality among the middle class use may be hidden tolerated as high spirits and negotiated away- Cicorel

Jacobson el al

  • Multiple disadvantaged and complex backgrounds in the majority of 200 children and young people in custody they sampled
  • For example, around 3/4 were known to have had absent fathers, around half to have lived in a deprived house sold or unsuitable accommodation in just under half to runaway or absconded at some point in their lives
  • More than 1/4 had witnessed domestic violence, with a similar proportion having experienced the local authority care or you could put in the research found it another common aspect of their lives was disrupted education as half both known to have taunted or regularly failed to attend school for other reasons and half had been excluded
  • Police officers were more likely to stereotype and label working-class youth as delinquent but were more likely to negotiate with middle-class youth and their parents
  • This meant that the working class ended up in the statistics meaning it looked like just the working class committed crime and not the middle class, Causing the police to see the working class as criminal