CRIMINOLOGYsocial strain, or structurally based unequal oppor-
tunity, and that some of these adaptations can
result in crime.
Subcultural explanations of crime are similar
to both differential association and anomie theo-
ries. Like differential association, subculture theo-
ries have an important learning component. Both
types of theories emphasize that crime, the behav-
ior, accompanying attitudes, justifications, etc.,
are learned by individuals within the context of the
social environment in which they live. And, as
anomie and other versions of strain theory empha-
size, subcultural explanations of crime tend to
focus on lower-class life as a generating milieu
in which procriminal norms and values thrive.
Cohen’s book Delinquent Boys (1955) describes
delinquency as a product of class-based social
strains, which lead to a gang subculture conducive
to delinquency. Miller (1958) argued that a
prodelinquency value system springs from situa-
tions where young boys grow up in poor, female-
headed households. He felt that adherence to
these values, which he called ‘‘the focal concerns
of the lower class,’’ made it more likely that boys
would join gangs and involve themselves in delin-
quency. This idea enjoys recurring popularity in
explanations of behavior in poor, and especially
urban, minority neighborhoods (Banfield 1968;
Murray 1984) even though it is notoriously diffi-
cult to test empirically.
A different version of subculture theory has
been championed by Wolfgang (Wolfgang and
Ferracuti 1967). Wolfgang and his colleagues ar-
gued that people in some segments of communi-
ties internalized, carried, and intergenerationally
transferred values that were proviolence. Accord-
ingly, members of this subculture of violence would
more frequently resort to violence in circumstanc-
es where others probably would not. Critics of this
thesis have argued that it is difficult to assess who
carries ‘‘subculture of violence values’’ except via
the behavior that is being predicted.
Along with most other institutions and tradi-
tions, mainstream criminology was challenged in
the 1960s. Critics raised questions about the theo-
ries, data, methods, and even the definitions of
crime used in criminology. The early challenges
came from labeling theorists. This group used a
variant of symbolic interaction to argue that law-
violating behavior was widespread in the general
population, and the official labeling of a selected
subset of violators was more a consequence of who
the person was than of what the person had done
(Becker 1963). Consequently, crime should not be
defined as behavior that violates the law, because
many people violate the law and are never arrest-
ed, prosecuted, or convicted. Rather, crime is a
behavior that is selectively sanctioned, depending
on who is engaging in it. It follows then that when
criminologists use data produced by the criminal
justice system, we are not studying crime but the
criminal justice system itself. These data only tell
us about the people selected for sanctioning, not
about all of those who break the law. And, labeling
theorists argued, most of our theories have been
trying to explain why lower-class people engage
disproportionately in crime, but since they do
not—they are simply disproportionately sanc-
tioned—the theories are pointless. What should
be explained, labeling theorists argued, is why
some people are more likely to be labeled and
sanctioned as criminals than are others who en-
gage in the same or similar behavior. The answer
they offered was that those with sufficient resourc-
es—enough money, the right racial or gender
status, etc.—to fend off labeling by the criminal
justice system are simply less likely to be arrested.
A further contribution by labeling theorists is
the idea that the labeling process actually creates
deviance. The act of labeling people as criminals
sets in motion processes that marginalize them
from the mainstream, create in them the self-
identification as ‘‘criminal,’’ which in turn affects
their behavior. In other words, the act of sanction-
ing causes more of the behavior the criminal jus-
tice system wishes to extinguish.Marxist criminology actually began in 1916 with
the publication of Bonger’s Criminality and Eco-
nomic Conditions, but it became central to
criminological discourse in the late 1960s and
1970s (Chambliss 1975; Platt 1969; Quinney 1974;
Taylor, Walton, and Young 1973). The Marxist
critique of mainstream criminology can be sum-
marized by focusing on the argument that it tends
to ask three types of questions: Who commits
crimes? How much crime is there? Why do people
break the law? The Marxist perspective argues that
these may be important questions, but more im-
portant are those that do not reify the law itself.
Marxists argue that in addition to the above ques-
tions, criminologists should ask: Where does the