Encyclopaedia of Gangs : Delinquent Subcultures

Delinquent Subcultures Russell Kelly (Independent Researcher, Malborn, Germany ex-University of Central Lancashire, UK) Introduction From the end of the Second World War, as economies returned to domestic from war production, employment opportunites for skilled and unskilled workers expanded in many countries. Such was the shortage of labour in regions within the United States and across Europe that the international recruitment of workers extended across continents. In many cities, this resulted in a concentration of attention on young people as the major supply of labour. Introduced into these calculations were new groups of young people, the children of migrant workers. This focus created ’youth’. Migrations increased the focus on ‘culture’, especially relations between cultures. Merging these two concepts together gives the notion of ‘youth culture’ as a source for sociological researchers confronted with problems like ‘gangs of youth’ and ‘delinquency’. These became the prevailing social issues of the 1950s and into the 1960s Deviance and Culture Sociological theories of gangs and subcultures have their source in the work of the French sociologist. Émile Durkheim (La Division du Travail, Paris, 1893). This gives us the first argument in the theory: 1. That no society can exist without a level of deviance. That if we eradicated all forms of crime and deviance in a society, then that society would define other types of activity as crime. 2. A definition of the normal is not in itself possible except by defining that which is abnormal or unacceptable, deviance or the deviant. Kai Erikson (Wayward Puritans, New York: Wiley, 1966) demonstrates this argument using the example of the exiled English Protestants to New England in the USA. A firmly honest, law abiding community could not exist without defining the deviance within it - and so defined the most direct contrast to its main beliefs - against religious belief (heresy), then devil worship. The deviant was the witch. Incidentally, the witch had other qualities which made her the ideal target - a single woman, often the midwife, who owned but did not work her land, whose knowledge and skills with herbs and natural medicines threatened the male religious hierarchy. The Puritans reinforced their own sense of normality only by contrast to the defined deviant. And in La Suicide (1897), Durkheim gaves the theory a third proposition: 3. That a state of anomie (normlessness) will cause the ultimate form of deviance, suicide. That the loss of direction, of the possibility of achievement, of a sense of purpose in life, breaks the bond between the individual and society. The individual cannot survive in this state and will take his/her own life. Working from these three propositions, the American sociologist Robert K. Merton (1938), refined these ideas by arguing: 4. That a state of anomie can occur at different places, times and levels within a social structure (society) giving rise to different modes of adaptation by the individual to the dysfunctional situation. Merton's Typology of Modes of Adaptation (See also Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, New York: Free Press, 1968) argues that any role/status in society can be identified as a conjunction of cultural goals and legitimate institutionalized means for their achievement. To be a doctor is to have a cultural goal - to cure sick people - and to have fulfilled the legitimate means to achieve that goal, to have undertaken a prolonged general and specific education in medical science. Such a role is given status, prestige and honour in society and is offered to young people as a respected profession to aim for. But not all young people, Merton argued, have equal access to legitimate means nor have they, then, the opportunity to achieve the goals offered. This situation applied particularly to poor, urban, working class young people who were the perpetrators of much crime in American society. Merton suggested that this state of dissociation between cultural goals and legitimate means (a state of anomie) would produce different responses or modes of adaptation, depending on individual characteristics and social circumstances: MODES OF ADAPTATION Cultural Goals Institutionalized Means 1. Conformity + + 2. Innovation + - 3. Ritualism - + 4. Reatreatism - - 5. Rebellion +/- +/- [ + = acceptance - = rejection +/- = neither accept nor reject but replace ] Conformity is the normal response of the young person with access to means for the achievement of goals - s/he regularly attends school, works hard, is polite to adults, obeys the law, is the ideal young person. Confronted with neither means nor opportunity, the Innovator accepts cultural goals, the status symbols of a modern society - the motor car, fashionable clothing, money to spend, the images of a successful young person portayed in TV, films and advertisements. The problem for them is how to achieve the goals and acquire the symbols of such achievement. Their solution is any means, criminal or non-criminal, that are available. If you need a motor car, then take one. If you need money then steal it or steal something that you can exchange for money - the street criminal. The response of the Ritualist is to disregard the goals and the loss of the opportunity to achieve them and to continue to follow the Institutionalized Means knowing that goals can never be achieved. This urban, working-class youth will continue to work hard at school, will be the ideal child, will be disappointed when they fail to be accepted for university or medical school, will take a job as a clerk and will lead an ordinary mundane life hoping that some time in the future they may fulfil their goal. It never happens and the realization that it will never happen (the mid-life crisis) can lead to psychiatric illness or random extreme acts. Some forms of phobia or fixation may be explained as ritualistic responses. The Retreatist is sometimes referred to as the double failure. Usually aware that they cannot succeed in ‘normal’ life, they have tried Innovation and failed. Their situation becomes one of apathy or retreat from the challenge where neither the means nor the goals are acceptable and they find comfort in altered states through alcohol, drugs or narcotics. The Rebel is perhaps the anti-hero of the 1950s movie (the James Dean or Marlon Brando characters) who rejects both the means for goal achievement and the goals and finds alternative goals and different means. Why have a job, work and buy a house or apartment when an unused apartment can be occupied? Why adapt the status symbols of 'their' society when we can define a style more appropriate to our life style and living conditions? ‘I want to be everything that my parents disapprove of.’ The Juvenile Delinquent The 1950s and 1960s introduced a new phenomenon on the world scene, youth culture, and with it a new folk devil, the ‘juvenile delinquent’. Sociological interest was in juvenile gang which had a long history in American sociology, especially the intense period of qualitative research by the Chicago School of Social Researcxh in the 1920s and 1930s. In England, the approach was more individual, dominated by the work of psychologists like Cyril Burt (1937) and later Hans Eysenck (1965) whose explanations rest on on notions of weak and ineffective operant-conditioning and the consequent lack of self-discipline, conscience formation and the need for negative reinforcement or corrective punishment. Russian criminological research followed similar lines presenting the criminal mind as a defective, cybernetic (information processing) system (Kudryavtsev, 1968). With recent advances in Biological Science, some attempts were made to identify genetic causes for crime and delinquency - relating violent behaviour in psyhciatric patients to abnormal chromosomes mosaics (The XYY man with an extra sex determining chromosome or Klinefeldter's Syndrome). Yet, every country was affected by this new phenomenon - the Jacquet-noire in Paris, the street gangs of New York, the Mods and Rockers and football hooligans in England, street gangs and football hooligans in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Skinheads in Germany, the painted faces of football gangs in Holland and Italy - a phenomenon of groups of youths aged between 14 and 21 years, mostly male, with some female 'groupies', mostly urban, often racially, ethnically or nationalistically identified and always drawn from the lower socio-economic groups in their society. What was new about these gangs was their age and their activities. They were generally 5 to 10 years younger than the adult gangs of pre-War America and Europe. Their violence or criminal activities were more intense and exaggerated than their predecessors. Their activities were more public and more notorious because of the spread of the international mass media which often produced copy cat incidents in other countries. An incident in Berlin, Germany, a sexual assault with excessive brutality and murder by throwing the victim from an apartment balcony was nearly an exact copy of a prior incident in Manchester, England, where a group of youths imprisoned a woman, raped and sexually assulated her, made a number of attempts to kill her before pouring petrol over her and lighting it. She died subsequently of her burns. Although beginning in the 1950s, and transforming in different directions, the juvenile delinquent and his (and later her) gang were still prevalent across the world in the 1990s and remain a phenomenon into the 21st century. The Delinquent Subculture - An Explanation Albert K. Cohen (1955) offered an explanation of the 'new' phenomenon with his concept of the ‘delinquent subculture’. His version of the anomie of Durkheim and Merton was ‘status frustration’ (that working class boys were subjected to middle-class aspirations or goals that they could never fulfil). This led to a ‘reaction formation’, the creation of an alternative social form, the subculture, a negative version, a reaction to the dominant values of middle-class culture: orderliness, cleanliness, responsibility, the virtues of ambition and purpose, the postponement of immediate gratification and self-indulgence in favour of the planned achievement of longer term goals: The delinquent's conduct is right, by the standards of his subculture precisely because it is wrong by the norms of the larger culture. (Cohen, pp. 25-32) This subculture is based on short run hedonism, the immediate gratification of those needs of the individual or the group which only they can achieve. The failure of their parents, their family, their community, for them, is that these social institutions cannot meet their needs as adolescents for status and self esteem, for adulthood. These are achieved by seizing autonomy - but not autonomy for the individual but the autonomy of the gang or group. The youth must commit and subordinate himself to the interests and demands of a new alternative culture (and, as a mirror image, it is not a new culture but a sub-culture) to achieve status and self esteem. The delinquency of Cohen's subculture lies in its negativity, the reaction formation. It must be by definition deviant or criminal in that it seeks to offend the dominant middle class values it rejects. So, the problem is not a psychologically abnormal young individual. It is not a deviant or criminal individual. It is a normal reaction formation of working-class young people in a post-war, materialist world in their search for status and self-esteem where aspirations had outstripped the possibility of their achievement. Walter B. Miller (1968) wanted to extend this argument onto more general political ground by suggesting that Cohen's delinquent subculture was no more than a reflection of its lower-class milieu and was a counterculture or oppositional subculture - an emerging class consciousness or awareness of a new urban proletariat. He argued that what Cohen was describing was not a parent-youth conflict but simply working-class culture. The delinquent subculture theory offered a basis for understanding young delinquents. It was a social form, a definable social grouping of young people usually aged between 14 and 21 years. Normally the group is all male although the group may be attended by one or more androgenous females who are with, rather than in the group. The group has admission rules. There might be joining rituals or oaths of allegiance. There are qualifications for joining based on age, race, ethnicitiy and area of residence. It is geographically defined - its has its own turf, or area, its sources of gratification which it is prepared to defend against intruders. It is likely to have an argot or language specific to group members. Normally this will be the general language of the parent culture using the same language rules but with vocabulary specific to the group and its activities. Argot is a specialised vocabulary, sometimes with specific grammatical or lexical forms, which must be applied in the right context and with the correct reference points. A parent cannot have access to appropriate use of argot forms because whichever way they choose to use the word or grammatical constructions will inevitably be incorrect. Similarly, dress codes may use the same items of clothing and obey dressing rules (like dress in warm clothes when it is cold) but the combinations (expensive training shoes, one or more sizes too big, combined with several layers of relatively cheap T-shirts and jeans, with the hair long in parts but shaved close in others) are specific to young people. Individual groups may select argot and dress combinations from the specialised subculture and create or adapt their own specific versions. The culture may extend to ways of walking, forms of physical contact between members (high-five, hand-slap greetings), ways of sitting in or on a chair, diet and diet content (Burgers and Diet Cola), correct ways of eating, places to eat, times to eat and so on. Some youth cultures (London, Paris, Milan, California) were and are particularly creative and communicate their new trends through popular music and the media. It is an interesting point to note that one of the main weaknesses of communist and religious control systems during the post-war period was their inability to prevent the spread of 'Western' youth culture. Others (Japan, Germany, Holland, Canada, Australia) were more likely to copy their interpretations of youth forms Rock music, the international currency of youth culture, which is sung mostly in English, can translate or integrate into itself elements of African, Bangladeshi, Greek or Turkish culture, words, sounds and rhythms but were rarely successful translated into French, German or the Scandanvian languages. Some aspects of these cultures have grown progressively more and more bizarre - ear, nose and body piercing and tatooing - in the search to be different. Some have grown into alternative art forms - paint spraying; fashion design; motor car and motorbike style and decoration. Notably, many attempts to commercialise and normalise youth culture have failed, or their apparent success has produced an immediate rejection and replacement Other commercial activities have had to follow diligently changes and developments - pop newspapers, music programmes, pop videos and TV commercial advertising - or have faded into the history of popular culture. The short run hedonism means that change (constant cultural revolution) is a necessity. It is also worth noting that every ten years or so, today's oldest youth can become the parent to a member of an emerging subculture. Delinquency and Opportunity The integration of prior theoretical precepts like Merton’s Modes of Adaptation with Cohen’s Delinquent Subculture provides a theoretical account for the style of delinquent subculture that emerges in one place or at one time rather than another. Why are some youth groups (Neo-Nazis and Football Hooligans) excessively violent when others seem to eschew violence and concentrate on technically sophisticated car or computer crime? What of the role of drugs? Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin (1960) offer three forms of adaptation not of individuals but of the subculture. Their improvement on delinquent subculture theory is based on the concept of differential opportunity - that the type of subculture that will emerge will reflect the availability of supporting elements available in the surrounding environment. A continuum of local social organization and integration was identified which direct the development of three types of subculture. First, the Criminal Subculture will emerge in a closely integrated working class urban community following organising patterns laid down by the adult or mature criminal culture. The subculture is a training ground for progression into the adult criminal culture. The membership rules, argot and dress code will still apply but the permitted activities of the gang will be carefully defined and may be policed by the adult criminal brotherhood. An example is the Amusement Arcade where the quick thinking, reaction speed and manual dexterity shown on the machines (from pinball machines in the 1950s to the latest arcade computer games of 2006) are useful skills for some criminal activities (picking pockets, breaking into and entering houses). The arcades are usually owned and run to provide recruiting grounds for the adult criminal groups or their associates. In London's East End, there were reports that notorious gangsters actively supported boxing clubs for boys as a source of future muscle. In Berlin, children are frequently used in organized begging in tourist centres. Charles Dickens’ Fagin in Oliver Twist survives in some form in every urban centre in the world. Any activities of the subculture which might cause problems (from the police) for the adults (excessive stealing, assaults on elderly people) will be quickly stopped and may be severely punished. In Northern Ireland, for example, the IRA policed the catholic areas of conurbations and severely punished sex or drug crimes by young people while actively recruiting them to their terrorist organization. Ironically, in these situations, the police and the criminal organizations are actively recruiting from the same social groups. Where the surrounding environment is not structured and organized, a Conflict Subculture will emerge. The group will act randomly, engaging in any activity which appeals to them on the day or at the moment. It will inevitably conflict with any representatives of the adult world who try to contain or control it. Its activities cannot be predicted and it is here perhaps that the current debate about the influence of TV and violent video-films should be focussed. These films are one source of ideas for the conflict subculture, among others, and can be argued to be the source internationally of many copy-cat crimes or deviant activities. The Retreatist Subculture, Cloward and Ohlin's third type, is made up of those who are excluded from or who have failed in the other two types. These are the drug subcultures, the solvent abusers or glue sniffers - group who gather around some mind-altering activtiy which is a withdrawal from the day-to-day life struggle for identity and self-esteem. It is in these subculture where argot and dress-codes can be most important because they are constantly in danger of arrest and suppression by the police. The argot and dress are means to identify members clearly so that outsiders cannot penetrate and expose the group. There major purpose seems to be as a focus for the supply of drugs and substances and as a training ground in the techniques of use and in understanding and interpreting the drug experiences (See Howard S. Becker, Becoming a marijuana user, in H.S. Becker, (ed.) Outsiders, Glencoe: Free Press, 1963). The squat (Alternativ-haus) is the home for the Retreatist Subculture, but it is always temporary and easily moved in it attracts too much police attention. Reading: Cyril Burt (The Young Delinquent, 1937) Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin (Delinquency and Opportunity, Glencoe: The Free Press, 1960) Albert K. Cohen (Delinquent Boys, Glencoe: Free Press, 1955) S. Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics), Émile Durkheim (La Division du Travail, Paris, 1893 ). La Suicide (1897), Durkheim Kai Erikson (Wayward Puritans, New York: Wiley, 1966) Hans Eysenck (Crime and Personality, 1965) V. Kudryavtsev, Prestupnosti, Moscow: State Publishing, 1968 Robert K. Merton, (Social Structure and Anomie, American Sociological Review, vol. 3, 1938, p. 672.) Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, New York: Free Press, 1968 Walter B. Miller (Delinquency and lower class culture, Journal of Social Sciences, 1958, reprinted in M.E. Wolfgang, L. Savitz and N. Johnston, The Sociology of Crime and Delinquency, New York: Holt, 1968) Lewis Yablonsky, The Violent Gang, Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1967, pp. 133ff