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Topic 1- Cloward and Ohlin: 3 subcultures - Coggle Diagram
Topic 1- Cloward and Ohlin: 3 subcultures
Cloward and Ohlin argue that different neighbourhoods provide different illegitimate means for young people to learn criminal skills and develop criminal skills. They identify 3
Criminal
Provides youths with an apprentice for a career in utilitarian crimes and arise only in neighbourhoods with a longstanding and stable criminal culture with established hierarchy of adult crime.
Allows the young to associate with adult criminals who can select those with the right skills and abilities and provide them with training and opportunities for employment on criminal ladder
Conflict
Arise in areas of high population turnover which results in high levels of social disorganisation and prevents stable professional criminal network.
Its absence means that only illegitimate opportunities are available are within loosely organised gangs. In these violence provides a release of the men's frustration at their blocked opportunities as well as an alternative status that they can earn
This is the subculture that closely resembles the one Cohen talks bout
Retreatist
In any neighbourhood, not everyone who aspires to be a professional criminal or gang leader actually succeeds just as in the legitimate opportunity structure where not everyone gets a well paid job
What becomes of these double failure who failure in both the legitimate and illegitimate opportunity structures. They argue that they may turn to a retreatist subculture based on illegal drug use.
Main Theory
Cloward and Ohlin note that not everyone in this situation adapts to blocked opportunities by turning to innovation such as theft. Different subcultures respond in different ways to lack of legitimate opportunities
They attempt to explain why different subcultures responses occur. They believe its not only unequal access to legitimate opportunities that Merton and Cohin recognise but also the unequal access to illegitimate opportunity structures
For example not everyone who fails by legitimate means such as schooling than has an equal chance of being a successful safecracker
Evaluations
They draw the boundaries too sharply between the subcultures. South found that the drug trade is a mixture of both disorganised crime like the conflict subculture and professional style criminal subcultures. In Cloward and Ohlin's theory it would be impossible to belong to more than one subculture
They overpredict the amount of working class crime
David Matza argues that most delinquents are not strongly committed to their subculture as strain theories suggest but drift bin and out of delinquency
Unlike Cohen, they provide an explanation for different types of working class deviance in terms of different subcultures