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A Perspective on Middle-Class Delinquency*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Joseph W. Scott  and
Edmund W. Vaz
Joseph W. Scott
Affiliation:
Indiana University
Edmund W. Vaz
Affiliation:
McMaster University
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Extract

Most literature on juvenile delinquency describes it as essentially a product of the lower socio-economic classes. While there has been some speculation over the incidence and quality of middle-class delinquency, what evidence exists is largely impressionistic. Nevertheless, the prevailing view is that delinquency among middle-class youth has increased in recent years. The present paper seeks a sociological and theoretical perspective to help account for the dominant forms of juvenile delinquency among middle-class youth. It attempts also to explain the emergence and the particular qualities of middle-class delinquency as a consequence of structural changes taking place in the larger society.

Accounting for middle-class delinquency in North America requires an understanding of the dominant culture of middle-class youth. Structural changes in society over the last half-century have produced opportunities for extensive adolescent peer-group participation and the emergence of a mass youth culture. During the growth of this youth culture, in which the majority of middle-class teenagers participate, there have emerged, jointly, both delinquent and non-delinquent patterns of behaviour. It is the thesis of this paper that the bulk of middle-class delinquency occurs in the course of customary, non-delinquent activities and falls within the limits of adolescent group norms. Moreover the knowledge of both delinquent and non-delinquent patterns in the youth culture is widely shared among middle-class teenagers. Thus, in order to account for middle-class delinquency one need not look for a separate “delinquent subculture.”

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , August 1963 , pp. 324 - 335
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1963

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Footnotes

*

We are indebted to Professors Albert K. Cohen and Sheldon Stryker of Indiana University for their advice and criticism in the preparation of this paper.

References

1 Riesman, David, Glazer, Nathan, and Denney, Reuel, The Lonely Crowd (New York, 1955), 30 ff.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., 79.

3 White Collar, (New York, 1956), 24.Google Scholar

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6 Riesman, et al., The Lonely Crowd, 67.Google Scholar

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16 Ibid., p. 34.

17 For some recent alternative views on middle-class delinquency see Bohlke, Robert H., “Social Mobility, Stratification Inconsistency and Middle Class Delinquency,” Social Problems, VIII, no. 4, Spring, 1961 Google Scholar; Cohen, Albert K., Delinquent Boys (Glencoe, Ill., 1955)Google Scholar; Cohen, Albert K., “Middle-Class Delinquency and the Social Structure,” a paper read at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Society, 1957 Google Scholar; Cohen, Albert K. and Short, James, “Research in Delinquent Subcultures,” Social Issues, XIV, no. 3, 1958.Google Scholar

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