Strain
When members of the lower-class are unable to achieve symbols of success via conventional means they feel anger, frustration, and resentment
Status Frustration
Because social conditions prevent them from achieving success legitimately, lower-class youths experience this form of culture conflict
Cultural Deviance Theory
Combines elements of strain and social disorganization theories
Anomie
A lack of norms or clear social standards. because of rapidly shifting moral values, the individual has few guides to what is socially acceptable.
Social Disorganization Theory
Focuses on the urban conditions, such as high unemployment and school dropout rates, to explain crime.
Cultural Transmission
When subcultural values are handed down from one generation to the next.
Negative Affective States
The anger, frustration and adverse emotions associated with destructive social relationships.
Social Ecology
This school of criminologists associate crime rates and the need for police services to community deterioration.
Strain Theory
Conflict between people's goals and means
A Culture of Poverty
Crushing lifestyle of lower-class areas is thought to produce this and is passed on from one generation to the next.
The result of ineffective community social control efforts
Increase in Crime
Social Structure Theory
Believe the root cause of crime can be directly traced to socioeconomic disadvantages that have become embedded in American society.
Collective Efficacy
The social control exerted by cohesive communities that is based on mutual trust.
Transitional Neighborhood
A neighborhood wracked by extreme poverty and suffering high rates of population turnover.
Relative Deprivation
The idea that anger and mistrust result from perceptions of inequality that lead lower-class people to feel deprived and embittered in comparison with those more affluent.
General Strain Theory
The view that multiple sources of strain interact with an individual's emotional traits and responses to produce criminality.
Concentration Effect
As working- and middle-class families flee inner-city poverty-ridden areas, the most disadvantaged population is consolidated in urban ghettos.
American Dream
Defines both a goal and process to accumulate goods and wealth in the United States.
Social Classes
Segments of the population whose members have a relatively similar portion of desirable belongings, and who share attitudes, values and norms.
Focal Concerns
Values, such as toughness and street smarts, that have evolved specifically to fit conditions in lower-class environments
Middle-Class Measuring Rods
The standards by which authority figures, such as teachers and employers, evaluate lower-class youngsters and often prejudge them negatively
Reactive Formation
Irrational hostility by young delinquents who adopt norms directly opposed to middle-class goals and standards.
Delinquent Subcultures
A value system adopted by lower-class youths that is directly opposed to that of the larger society.
Negative Affective States
Anger, frustration, and adverse emotions produced by a variety of sources of strain.
Differential Opportunity
The view that lower-class youths, whose legitimate opportunities are limited, join gangs and pursue criminal careers as alternative means to achieve universal success goals.