Lower Class Culture

Lower class culture is cause of delinquency Miller made this statement in 1958 although it was an imperfect notion, but I will argue that this statement was a brand-new filed in criminology and it well addressed the cause of street crime. Decades later, Anderson, Sandberg and Ilan took his theory farer, they connected crime with one issue the economic exclusion that existing in the society. I will make my argument by combine the statement Miller (1958) and Anderson (2000) made which are lower class culture cause crimes and the “code of the street” -- economic exclusion and ethnic marginalization are the main cause of crime. Across the history, many scholars have looked into the topic of culture and crime. They all have their own unique
He challenges those theories that looked at crime in simplex way, but he open to there are many other factors influence the lower class culture. Tradition criminological theories which argue the cause of crime are physiological, psychodynamic and environmental; he taken them into consideration that delinquency was not one dimensional. However, Miller fails to take economic factor into account; Anderson (2000) filled in the gap with idea of “code of the street”. Anderson looked into the inner city African American community where consider is the ghetto poor area. He claims that economic exclusion, institutionalised racism and distrust of criminal justice system lead young people into delinquency. Therefore, I will suggest that Miller’s idea of lower class culture is the cause of crime is an important idea, but it need to combine work of Anderson to address other social factors
Miller made his conclusion by using the ethnographic work; he explains delinquency is all about young people conforming to peer-group norms among lower class youth. These young people who engaged in crime or risk taking behaviours were aiming to get confirmation from their peer group. Moreover, Miller linked the female based household with youth delinquency. Female based household is a common phenomenon among lower class; the absent of masculine social figure leads youth feels more comfortable within one-sex peer group. Miller believed this lower class culture have been remain for centuries and had its own integrity (1958, p.19). Anderson built on Miller’s statement and he did research on African American community in the inner city US. The livelihood in ghetto poor in his opinion was more than lower class culture can explain. Code of street verse code of decency was his main argument. He sees lower class culture as code of the street and this code is important when for people live in inner city. Not every family live in the inner city are criminals; many family follow the mainstream culture which is the code of decency – hard working and plan for the future, the parents sacrifice for their children. However, code of street is the norm and is the key for children to survive. Since the hard working parents or street oriented