by Leonardo Alvez

Created on: July 08, 2009   Last Updated: July 14, 2009

Many people hold the idea that it is the media that is to blame for teenage subcultures committing crime. That violent and abusive music is influencing young people to become criminals, or that violent playstation games is causing young people to behave in a criminal manner. However I feel that it is naive to hold that has the only or the biggest factor that creates these subcultures and influences their behavior.

Before I elaborate on deeper and underlying reasons and theories of the creation of criminal subcultures, I believe it is necessary to define what exactly a subculture is. Subcultures can be defined as a subsection of the dominant culture of society. However subcultures that perform criminal and deviant acts will intentionally rebel against the shared norms and values of society. There is an underlying idea that the subcultures values have been formed in response or reaction to a situation in which a group finds itself.

The beginning point of sub cultural theories of crime can be seen in Merton's strain theory. From his research he argued that there are a range of different responses to the condition of anomie, or disjunction between goals such as financial success and socially approved means of attaining those goals. He explained how there existed an 'American dream' within society that caused individuals to aim for that kind of material success. However because of the inequalities in society, many subcultures were limited to success by legitimate means. As a result he prophesied that individuals would gain this American dream by any means albeit legal or illegal. Such a theory can give strong evidence for why drug war fare and gang gun crimes occur. Cloward and Ohlin developed this theory, and suggested that there were three types of subcultures alongside the main culture.

1) A criminal subculture: whereby a community could provide role models and a career structure, so that a career in crime was an alternative to a career in the legitimate world. 2) A conflict subculture: In other situations frustration at failure could lead to violent gang warfare in conflict subculture. 3) A retreatist subculture: which are based on drug and alcohol addiction supported by petty crime. Although it is possible to see these ideas as relevant in some situations.

However Miller presents an alternative theory on why certain subcultures perform criminal acts. He argues that originates from an extension of the values of working class subcultures. Thus he explains,

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