1) STRAIN THEORY:A) Cohen: Middle-Class Values, Strain and Delinquent: Cloward and Ohlin’s theory focuses not on goals but the opportunity to commit crime.CHILD DelinquincyCullen believed that delinquency was primarily a problem of poor, working-class boys.Status is largely symbolic.So long as these lower-class boys stayed at home or in their part of the neighborhood, they don’t experience many problems.It’s when they go to school that problems arise.Many of the values taught at schools are those of the middle-class which stand for possibility, achievement, etc.However, the means of these boys to achieve are limited.When these boys go to school and face middle-class refinement, they appear crude and thus arises their frustration.(toughness, power)These boys develop an inverted status system where they value the opposite of what the middle-class praises.Non-utilitarian—these boys do not value goals but aimless wandering and “screwing around”.They steal for the sake of stealing and destroy for the sake of destroying.The boys reject middle-class norms and disvalue their property.Expressive Action:MaliciousNegativisticIn the middle-class, people are taught to value work.In contrast, the lower-class praises idleness.In the middle-class, individualism is praised.In contrast, lower-class boys tend to coalesce into delinquent groups or gangs.We see in Cohen’s work the development of a strain theory.It highlights the inability of boys in a certain class to attain status.Cullen and Ohlin’s contribution to criminology was the notion that to commit a crime, you need the opportunity to do it.Society has to provide you with some criminal opportunity.Cloward and Ohlin spoke of two kinds of structures in society:Legitimate—these involve mainstream institutions like businesses, politics, schools, churches, etc.They operate in accordance to the law.Illegitimate—it is a social structure in the sense that it is organized and has some sense of purpose.For Cloward and Ohlin, crime is utilitarian and has a purpose.As different as the two structures are, they believe that they are integrated.In order for the illegitimate social structure to exist, it must be somehow related to the legitimate social structure.They have to draw resources from each other.Ex. Many mob bosses had relationships with politicians.The illegitimate structure would extort business from the legitimate structure.1. Criminal subculture—can form in delinquent boys when the legitimate and illegitimate structures integrate.The delinquent boys strive to get into the illegitimate structures, to become mob bosses when they grow up.These boys have already given up hope in joining the legitimate social world.They’re strained so they hope to break into the illegitimate world.Cloward and Ohlin disagreed with Cohen in that they argued that delinquent boys are driven by goals.Once these kids gain access into the illegitimate but organized, they become less sporadic in their actions and are no longer violent for the sake of being violent.2. Conflict Subculture—these boys use violence to gain statusViolence is the one thing that, no matter where they are, they can do.3. Retreatist Subculture—these kids have no hope of getting into the legitimate world.Even worse, they can’t make it into the illegitimate world.There are only so many positions in the world of organized crime.Once those positions are filled, everyone else is left out.The kids in the retreatist subculture are those that failed to gain access into the illegitimate world.These kids also failed to get into the conflict subculture because they may not have been violent enough.They are “double failures”.They form gangs but they aren’t cohesive.These kids then tend to fall into drug use.If were to go out into the real world, the majority of kids we would find would be party of the conflict subculture as evident from the graffiti.2) Agnew: General Strain TheoryAgnew’s theory is the only pure strain theory in criminology.He identifies any number of different kinds of strain an individual may experience.There are two things to recognize in the logic of Agnew’s theory:1. Where does strain occur in time?2. How does strain relate to a goal?Agnew developed his theory in 1992 and focused mainly on juvenile delinquency, mainly boys.Types of Strain:Experienced Strain:1. Strain as the failure to achieve positively valued goals:Strain as the disjunction between aspirations and expectations/actual achievements:There’s a gap between expectations and aspirations.Aspirations refer to the future.A lower-class boy may aspire to be a lawyer but he does not expect it to happen.Strain as the disjunction between expectations and actual achievements:Expectations means something different.It refers to what he or she expects to have right now.When he sees that everyone around him is successful, he experiences strain.Strain comes from the present and not from the future.Strain as the disjunction between just/fair outcomes and actual outcomes:The person feels as though he has prepared as much as everyone else but still hasn’t succeeded.He feels life is unfair and experiences strain.2. Strain as the removal of positively valued stimuli from the individual:There’s been a lot of concern lately that removing a parent and throwing them in prison is bad for children.3. Strain as the presentation of negative stimuli:Strain occurs even when the negative stimuli don’t affect how they can achieve their goals.Ex. Dilapidated buildings, litter, homeless people on the streets, etc.Vicarious Strain:You see people strained and feel strained yourself.You see people getting robbed and feel their pain.Anticipated Strain:You experience strain in anticipation of some future hardship which under your circumstances, are likely to happen.Ex. Living in a bad neighborhood, etc.Casual Mechanism:Anger:Strain makes people angry.Anger is a motivating factor for criminal activity.There has to be something that separates those who are angry and commit crimes and those who are angry and don’t.Adaptations to (Coping Strategies For) Strain:Cognitive Coping Strategies:Ignore/minimize the importance of adversity:If you give up on a goal, you don’t feel strained anymore.Maximize positive outcomes/minimize negative outcomes:If you shoot for the moon but fail, halfway isn’t too bad.You may be a loser but there are bigger losers than you are.Many times, victims engage in this maximization/minimization