Juvenile Delinquency and Class Conflict
Shapiro, Gilbert
DELINQUENT Boys, THE CULTURE OF THE GANG, by Albert K. Cohen. The Free Press, Glencoe, Ill., 202 pp. $3.50. We are now witnessing one of our periodic "crises" in social control. Though...
...The low man in the prestige system of the school is top dog in the delinquent gang...
...the immediate satisfactions of the proposed act seem to be crucial...
...Everybody wants to "do something" about delinquency today...
...The working class child is handicapped in the fight for recognition by the differences between working class and middle class techniques of child rearing and the differences between their informal social norms...
...Policies on this issue are as varied as the ideologies and vested interests of a highly differentiated society...
...he can succumb to what psychologists call a "reaction-formation" by participating in the subculture of juvenile delinquency...
...Loeb cites no specific organization, we assume he is ready to include DISSENT in this beneficence, and we therefore recommend his sentiments to our readers as among the worthier thoughts of the time...
...4.00.—This companion volume to the above-listed bookis a study prepared for the American Academic Freedom Project at Columbia University...
...He differs from his law-abiding neighbor only in having had more frequent and intensive contacts with the criminal culture...
...Reducing dropouts from school, recreational programs, slum clearance, parent education, higher teachers' salaries, remedial reading, more police, tougher and weaker judges, juries, and laws, larger prisons, love, religion, psychiatry, deep analysis, and scientific research are among the nostrums on the market...
...It reflects a detailed study of published research and the author's personal experience working in a boys' correctional institution...
...ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN OUR TIME, by Robert M. Maclver...
...This, of course, is quite consistent with suppression of the gang member's freedom in behalf of the norms and interests of the group...
...The educational system is the major institution in which the working class child first faces the problem of status-frustration...
...Much of their work has been devoted to the refutation of common hypotheses linking various personal qualities with criminality...
...THREE LESS IMPORTANT FEATURES Of the delinquent subculture are also of interest—its versatility, insistence upon group autonomy, and "short-run hedonism...
...When examined closely, even juvenile stealing often appears profitless...
...For Cohen's purposes, however, it is only necessary that the delinquent subculture be concentrated in the working class since, as he recognizes, not all delinquency is related to the subculture...
...In describing the subculture as "negativistic," Cohen suggests that it is organized about the principle of its "negative polarity" to the dominant middleclass culture...
...This volume traces the evolution of the problem of academic freedom in the American educational system up to the present day...
...His birth, social condition and upbringing do not allow him to achieve adequate recognition in terms of these standards...
...And regardless of the respectability of its origin, Cohen's theory is radical in its implications since it points up the fact that structural change is required for a constructive solution to the delinquency problem...
...When the proposed biological, intellectual, personality, and economic causes of crime are all eliminated by the Sutherland school, we are left with the theory of "differential association" which states that the criminal learns criminality from others who are already criminal...
...KARL MARx...
...The idea that delinquency is deeply related to the functioning of our society is not new...
...If even a significant portion of the delinquency problem takes the subcul tural form that Cohen describes, it would appear that different measures are necessary...
...He looks upon this subculture as a groupcontrived and jointly-elaborated solution to problems of status-frustration • While this theory could easily be extended to account for the concentration of the delinquent subculture amongadolescents and in the second generation of some immigrant groups, Cohen didnot attempt to do so...
...Columbia University Press, New York...
...Cohen's book is its discussion of policies for delinquency control...
...he can try to effect a compromise between working class norms and middle class demands...
...His book is an attempt to answer this question in the special case of the juvenile delinquent subculture...
...It is a reply to a critic who had attacked the International Working Men's Association, among other reasons, on the ground of poverty...
...Though official statistics show a sharp increase in the crime rate, particularly among adolescents, we will never know the extent to which this crisis is being fabricated...
...Cohen describes it as "non-utilitarian, malicious, and negativistic...
...5.50...
...Loeb as encouragement to socialists bedeviled by lean treasuries...
...he takes positive pleasure in flouting the rules...
...In contrast, working class norms set limits upon ambition, place more value on spending than on saving, value immediate satisfactions, feature an ethic of reciprocity rather than one of self-reliance, allow for the open expression of aggression, condemn rather than sanction the manipulative personality, and regard the sharing of property as a duty rather than a mere virtue...
...We are now witnessing one of our periodic "crises" in social control...
...For this reason it is especially encouraging to find a new study of juvenile delinquency, Albert Cohen's Delinquent Boys, which is a rare contribution not only to criminology, but to social science as well...
...As Cohen puts it, "Why is it there to be learned...
...IN THE SCHOOL, the settlement house, the economy and in his relations with those relatives, friends and neighbors who live by the cultural values of the middle class, the working class child is evaluated by standards that are not his and for which he has not been prepared...
...Recreational activities commonly consist of competitive sport or individual hobbies, which presume that the individual is motivated toward disciplined Calvinistic striving and leave no room for an ethic of reciprocity and activities bringing immediate satisfactions...
...The "malice" of the delinquent subculture consists of the group's apparent "enjoyment in the discomfiture of others...
...1955...
...Such a view might be admir able were it not for the fact that this time, as whenever the argument is advanced, the recommendation amounts to leaving things as they are...
...Rarely are activities planned or long range consequences considered...
...If the experts announce that everything conceivable contributes to crime, everyone with an axe is free to grind it on the public stone...
...The little ones do it because the big ones do it...
...Voluntary Press...
...DELINQUENT Boys, THE CULTURE OF THE GANG, by Albert K. Cohen...
...In time-honored conservative fashion, he warns of the indescribable complexity of society and the danger of reaching facile conclusions regarding what ought to be done...
...But if he does care, he faces a serious problem to which various solutions are available: he can try to break into the middle class world by hustling either in business or college, which means straining his ties with family and friends...
...This reversal of the middle class status-hierarchy is the crucial explanation of the content and distribution of the delinquent subculture...
...In contrast with professional adult crime, and with the delinquency of female adolescents, the gang's activities are highly varied...
...Marx proceeded to note that despite its lack of funds, the movement had "won worldwide fame and a place in history, not by length of purse, but by strength of mind and unselfish energy...
...Stolen objects are frequently discarded, destroyed, or casually given away...
...Vandalism and truancy, the most common offenses, can only be "utilitarian" in the obscure, peculiar sense in which all behavior intended to satisfy some personal needs is utilitarian...
...Nevertheless, gangs of teen-age marauders roam the streets, occasionally seeking victims for brutal tortures or "rumbles" with rival gangs, and they present a serious social problem...
...Cohen feels that the available evidence indicates that delinquent offenses and the delinquent subculture are concentrated among male adolescents in the working class portion of the population—despite the unrepresentative samples on which this conclusion is usually based...
...The middle class standards determining success in school and in the economy include ambition, selfreliance, the attainment of skills of economic value, the sacrifice of immediate pleasures for future gain, rational planning, etiquette, personability, control of physical violence, the constructive use of leisure, and respect for property rights...
...Cohen's detailed description of this relationship is new...
...We want to know where the criminal culture comes from...
...This free-for-all is encouraged by the disorganized eclecticism of current criminology...
...faced in common by working class boys in a predominantly middle-class society...
...COHEN DEPARTS FROM where the late Edwin H. Sutherland and his students have left the study of crime...
...Since the good of the subculture is the bad of the middle class, and vice versa, the status hierarchy of the middle class dominated school or settlement house is completely reversed...
...Edited by John Loeb...
...And particularly futile is any program which leaves intact the pattern of invidious distinctions supposed to be necessary for the efficient functioning of a competitive economy...
...The latter has the special attraction of its "negative polarity" to the middle class norms, for this guarantees the bad boy in school a place in the sun...
...NEW BOOKS RECEIVED THE DEVELOPMENT OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN THE UNITED STATES, by Richard Hofstadter and Walter P. Metzger...
...This subculture has many characteristics besides its criminality...
...In this connection, it is of interest that studies show that male lower class delinquents belong to gangs and their crimes are gang activities more often than are those of female or middle class offenders.* Here, then, is Cohen's problem: to explain the existence of a subculture carried by gangs of delinquent boys, featuring non-utilitarian criminal activities, malice, negativism, versatility, short-run hedonism, and group autonomy, and concentrated in the male, working class sector of society...
...The subcultural delinquent not only avoids the pressures of legal and moral norms...
...THE WEAKEST PORTION Of Mr...
...We are urged, in effect, to tolerate muggings, rapes, gang wars, the wanton destruction of persons and property rather than fiddle with the sensitive mechanism of the social system...
...To be sure, the working class child need not necessarily adapt himself to these criteria, since they are of importance to him only to the degree that his self-esteem is involved, and this, in turn, becomes a problem only when he cares about the opinions that people with middle class values hold of him...
...Even intensive guidance and psychotherapy appear irrelevant since, far from being mentally ill, the delinquent appears to Cohen as having adjusted to an otherwise intolerable situation precisely through his participation in a delinquent group...
...Outside of his immediate family and residential neighborhood, the working class child is evaluated on the basis of middle class standards...
...3 pp...
...The delinquent subculture is not evenly distributed among the various sectors of our society...
...The "good" of the subculture is derived from the "bad" of the dominant culture, while the subcultural vices are precisely the virtues of the surrounding society...
...To many, such an explanation is unsatisfying...
...This snippet is now reprinted by Mr...
...The autonomy insisted upon is the right of the group to arrange its affairs without outside interference...
...This curious little pamphlet consists of an excerpt, never before reprinted in this country, from an article Marx wrote in the British Secular Chronicle for August 1878...
...These include his "ascribed status," based mainly upon his father's occupation, and upon various criteria of "achievement...
...Every specialist demands more funds to "meet the emergency" in his own way...
...the "good boy" is frequently beaten up...
...Columbia UniversityPress, New York, 1955...
...Each cure is, of course, based upon some assumed cause of delinquency, but it is doubtful that each policy monger's choice of a cause precedes his choice of a remedy...
...The distance between the group life of the delinquent subculture and the middle class orientation of most professionalized social workers is so great that one cannot feel very optimistic about superficial guidance efforts...
...It would, perhaps, have been more discreet to admit our ignorance of the class distribution of offenses...
...He writes that "every socialist must give until it hurts...
...Since police policy is invariably to "crack down" during a "crisis," official statistics may reflect the public anxiety as well as produce it...
...Since Mr...
Vol. 3 • January 1956 • No. 1
