Strain Theory

According to strain theory, delinquency occurs when there is a lost connection between achieving one’s goals and the ability to actually achieve them. Society pressures individuals to achieve despite one's inabilities to. When the means of achieving these goals is illegal, delinquency occurs. Some of these goals are materialistic in the United States, such as a big house, a nice car, or wealth. To strain theorists, the ability to achieve one’s goals is dependent on their social class. Adults or children living in the lower classes are unable to fulfill their goals conventionally; this state fuels frustration and anger which can be referred to as their strain. Illegal ways of achieving their goals could include acts of violence and theft.
Historically,
The first case is Rebecca Falcon who was fifteen years old when she was sentenced to life for the murder of a cab driver in Florida. Falcon grew up in Kansas where she was sexually abused by her stepdad and boys in her peer group. Her mom later sent her to live with her grandmother in Florida. When viewing Falcon's case from her four pillars of social control, it is obvious that there were inconsistencies and break downs in her peer and family pillars. Having been molested by her stepdad and then booted off to Florida because her parents could not handle her individual problem, Falcon had little in her family pillar to show for. Aside from her family pillar, there was arguable a worst destruction in her peer influence pillar. In her early teens, Falcon was physically and sexually assaulted by schoolmates and friends which would later lead to poor peer choices. After moving to Florida with an already shattered peer pillar, Flacon began associated with deviant peers. Falcon was with an adult friend who had a gun in the cab when the driver was shot. Even though they both claim the other shot the driver, it is clear she rebuilt her peer pillar with negative influences. Rebecca Falcon’s case can be explained through social control theory because she had a break down in her pillars as Reiss described in his theory on