them (Herrnstein).
More concretely, the age distributions and sex ratios of
societies or of localities can be interpreted as structural
features and related to differences in crime rates. Thus it
comes as little surprise to learn and comprehend that situa-
tions in which sex ratio is greatly distorted result in dif-
ferent patterns of sexual offense. Homosexualality, including
forcible rape, increases where men and women are kept apart from
the opposite sex, as in prisons (Blumstein, 1979). Prostitution
flourishes where numbers of men live without women but with the
freedom to “get out” on occasion, as from mining camps or mili-
tary bases (Blumstein).
These more concrete features of the “social structure” seem
at once more obvious and less interesting, however, than the
“class structure” of a society by the way in which its wealth
and prestige are differentially achieved and rewarded. It is
among these differentials that sociologists and many laymen con-
tinue to look for generators of crime.
The opportunity-structure hypothesis is one way of attending
to class differences and attempting to show how they breed crime.
It views criminality as adaptive, as utilitarian, as the way de-
prived people can get what everyone wants and has been told he
should have.
There is yet another type of explanation that looks upon the
pattern of rewards in a society as causing crime. This theory
differs from the opportunity-structure theory in its emphasis.
It interprets crime as more reactive than adaptive to social
stratification.
Reactive hypotheses are related to other structural schema in
emphasizing the role of the status system of a society in producing
crime and delinquency. As one kind of sociological explanation,
these formulations also partake of some of the subcultural ideas
and may even speak of “delinquent subcultures”. The reactive
hypotheses, however, describe criminal subcultures as formed in re-
sponse to status deprivation. They see criminality as less tradi-
tional, less ethnic, and more psychodynamically generated
(Ferrington).
They interpret delinquency as a status-seeking solution to
“straight” society’s denial of respect. The reactive hypotheses
are, then, a type of structural theory that carries a heavy burden
of psychological implication (Ferrington).
The pure reactive hypothesis claims that the social structure
produces a “reaction formation” in whom its rules disqualify for
status. Reaction formation, or reversal formation, is a psycho-
analytic idea: that we may defend ourselves against forbidden de-
sires by repressing them while expressing their opposites
(Ferrington). In this tense, the behavoirs of which the ego is
conscious are psychoanalytically interpreted as a shield against
admitting the true urges that have been frustrated. For example,
if one says that if I can’t have it, it must be no good. Thus,
it is held, if one can’t play the middle-class game, or won’t be
let into it, he responds by breaking up the play (Ferrington).
The denial is proof of the desire and when put into the present
topic, this results in an unlawful act of criminality.
Where the subcultural theorists see delinquent behavior as
“real” in its own right, as learned and valued by the actor, and
where the social psychologists agree but emphasize the training
processes that bring this about, the proponents of reactive hypo-
theses interpret the defiant and contemptuous behavoir of many de-
linquents as a compensation that defends them against the ego-
wounding they have received from the status system (Ferrington).
In scientific work there is a criterion, not pointly adhered
to, which says that the simple explanation is preferable to the
complex, that the hypothesis with few assumptions is preferable to
the one with many. There are simpler explanations of criminal
hostility than the reactive hypotheses. One such theory holds that
violence comes naturally and that it will be expressed unless we
are trained to control it. Another theory calls envy a universal
and independant motive (Herrnstein).
Some social psychologists believe that children will grow up
violent if they are not adequately nurtured. Adequate nurturing in-
cludes both appreciating the child and training him or her to ac-
knowledge the rights of others. From this theoretical stance, the
savagery of the urban gangster for example represents merely the
natural outcome of a failure in child upbringing.
Similarily, on a simple level of explanation, many sociolo-
gists and anthropologists believe that hostile behavior can be
learned as easily as passive behavior. Once learned, the codes
of violence and impatient tendencies of the mind are their own
positive values. Fighting and hating then become both duties and
pleasures. For advocates of this sociopsychological point of view,
it is not necessary to regard the barbarian whose words and deeds
“laugh at goodness” as having the same motives as more lawful per-
sons.
It needs no radical vision to agree that the school systems of
Western societies presently provide poor aprenticeship in adult-
hood for many adolescents. A poor apprenticeship for being grown
up is criminogenic.
In this sense, the “structure” of modern countries encourages
delinquency, for that structure lacks institutional procedures for
moving people smoothly form protected childhood to automonmous
adulthood. During adolescence, many youths in affluent societies
are neither well guided by their parents nor happily engaged by
their teachers. They are adult in body, but children in responsi-
bility and in their contribution to others. Now placed in between
irresponsible dependence and accountable independance, they are
compelled to attend schools that do not thoroughly stimulate the
interests of all of them and that, in too many cases, provide the
uninterested child with the experience of failure and the mirror
of denigration (Herrnstein). Educators are conceiving remedies.
This engages a dilemma–a dilemma of the democratic educators.
They want equality and individuality, objectives that thus far in
history have eluded societal engineers. Meanwhile, the metro-
politan schools of industrialized nations make a probable, but
measurable, contribution to delinquency.
Some crimes are rational. In such cases, the criminal way
appears to be the more effecient way of satisfying one’s wants.
When crime is regarded as rational, it can be given either a
structural or a sociopsychological explanation. The explanation
is structural when it emphasizes the conditions that make crime
rational. It becomes a sociopsychological explanation when it
emphasizes the interpretations of the conditions that make crime
rational, or when it stresses the training that legitimizes il-
legal activities. No one emphasis need be more correct–more use-
ful–than another. Conduct, lawful and criminal, always occurs
within some structure of possibilities and is, among normal
people, justified by an interpretation of that structure. Both
the interpretation of and the adaptation to a structure of
possibilities are largely learned. It is only for convenience
that we will discuss the idea that crime may be rational as one
of the structural, rather than one of the sociopsychological,
explantions.
The most obvious way in which a “social structure” produces
crime is by providing chances to make money illegally (Herrnstein).
Whether or not a structure elevates desires, it generates crime by
bringing needs into the view of opportunities.
This kind of explanation does not say that people behave
criminally because they have been denied legitimate opportunities,
but rather it says that people break the law, particulary those
laws concerning the definition of property, because this is a
rational thing to do. the idea of “rational crime” is in accord
with the common-sense assumption that most people will take money
if they can do so without penalty.
Obviously there are differences in personality that raise or
lower resistance to temptation. These differences are the concern
of those sociopsychological explantions that emphasize the
controlling functions of character. However, without attending
to these personal variables, it is notable that the common human
proclivity to improve and maintain status will produce offenses
against property when these tendencies meet the appropriate situa-
tion (Ferrington). These situations have been studied by crimin-
ologists in four major contexts. There are, first, the many
situations in civil life in which supplies, services and money are
available for theft. Theft is widespread in such situations. It
ranges from taking what isn’t nailed down in public settings to
stealing factory tools and store inventories to cheating on expense
accounts to embezzlement. Second, there are circumstances in which
legitimate work makes it economical to break the criminal law.
Third, there are “able criminals”, individuals who have chosen
theft as an occupation and who have make a success of it. These
expert thieves are sometimes affiliated with “musclemen” or
organizers in a fourth context of rational crimes, the context in
which crime becomes an economic enterprise fulfilling the demands
of a market (Ferrington).
Now specifically on these contexts, crime has been seen as a
preferred livelihood. The conception of some kinds of crime as
rational responses to “structures” indicates that in the struggle
to stay alive and in the desire to improve one’s material condi-
tion lie the seeds of many crimes. some robbery, but more
burglary; some snitching, but more boosting; some automobile
theft by juveniles, but more automobile “transfers” by adults
represent a consciously adopted way of making a living. All
organized crime represents such a preference. The organization of
large scale theft adopts new technologies and new modes of opera-
tion to keep pace with increases in the wealth of Western nations
and changes in security measures. Such businesslike crime has
been changing form craft crimes to project crimes involving big-
ger risks, bigger takes, and more criminal intelligence.
Conversations with successful criminals, those who use intel-
legence to plan lucrative acts, indicate considerable satisfaction
with their work. There is pride in one’s craft and pride in one’s
nerve. There is enjoyment of leisure between jobs. There is ex-
pressed delight in being one’s own boss, free of any compelling
routine. the carefree life, the irresponsible life, is appreciat-
ed and contrasted with the drab existence of more lawful citizens.
Given the low risk of penalty and the high probability of
reward, given the absence of pangs of guilt and the presence of
hedonistic preferences, crime is a rational occupational choice
for such individuals (Sampson).
On a level of lesser skill, many inhabitants of metropolitan
slums are in situations that make criminal activity a rational
enterprise. Young men in particular who show little interest in
school, but great distaste for the authority of a boss and the
imprisonment of a predictable job, are likely candidates for the
rackets. Compared to work, the rackets combine more freedom,
money and higher status at a relatively low cost. In some organ-
ized crimes, like running the numbers, risk of arrest is low.
the rationality of the choice of these rackets is therefore that
much higher for youths with the requisite tastes.
In summary, the structuralist emphasis on the criminogenic
features of a stratified society is both popular and persuasive.
The employment of this type of explanation becomes political.
If the anomie that generates crime lies in the gap between desires
and their gratification, criminologists can urge that desires be
modified, that gratifications be increased, or that some compro-
mise be reached between what people expect and what they are
likely to get (Christiansen).
The various political positions prescribe different remedies
for our social difficulties. Radical thinkers use the schema of
anomie to strengthen their argument for a classless or, at least,
a less stratified society. Conservative thinkers use this schema
to demonstrate the dangers of an egalitarian philosophy. At one
political pole, the recommendation is to change the structure of
power so as to reduce the pressure toward criminality. At the
other pole, the prescription is to change the public’s perception
of life.
Criminologists are themselves caught up in this debate. The
major tradition in social psychology, as it has been developed
from sociologists, emphasizes the ways in which perceptions and
beliefs cause behavoirs. Between how things are (the structure)
and how one responds to this world, the social psychologist
places attitude, belief, and definition of the situation. The
crucial question becomes one of assessing how much of any action
is simply a response to a structure of the social world, and how
much of any action is moved by differing interpretations of that
reality (Sampson). Social psychologists of the symbolic-inter-
actionist persuasion attempt to build a bridge between the struc-
tures of social relations and our interpretations of them and, in
this matter, to describe how crime is produced.
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