Cohen, Albert K. (1915–)

ALBERT COHEN is a criminologist who studied delinquent gangs and the subculture of workingclass boys. In 1955, he published Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang. In this influential book, he argued that the norms and values of a delinquent subculture encourage and condone delinquent behavior.

Criminal behavior, according to Cohen, was not acceptable to the dominant culture. The delinquent subcultures that arose in poor, urban environments were rooted in class differences, parental aspirations, and the quality of schools. Groups of boys, frustrated with their apparently low position in society, would begin to act in ways that were rewarded by their own peer group. Crime or gang participation was a rebellion against middle-class standards. Through a process known as reaction formation, those who became delinquent could achieve status by seeing who could reject middle-class values the most.

Cohen asserted that the position of one's family in the social structure was a determining factor in the problems a child would later face in life. Although not all working-class boys became criminals, deviant behavior was a response to social conditions. Cohen stated that delinquent boys acted randomly, according to impulse, and that their misbehavior was a way to achieve peer approval. Thus, the delinquent subculture stemmed from lower-class boys banding together to define their own status. Their behavior was “non-utilitarian, malicious and negativistic,” Cohen explained.

Cohen was a student of renowned criminologists Edwin Sutherland and Robert K. Merton. Cohen's delinquent subculture theory combined Sutherland's differential association theory with Merton's strain theory and culture conflict theory. In the 1950s, the public was concerned about juvenile delinquency, and middle-class values were being widely dispersed. Cohen attempted to find the origins of delinquent behavior among lower-class boys and teenage gang members who defied the middleclass goals. Cohen explained how these criminal subcultures had come to “flourish most conspicuously in the ‘delinquency neighborhoods’ of our larger American cities.”

Cohen's work has been both supported and refuted. In Delinquent Boys, he asserted that “the delinquent subculture was mostly to be found in the working class.” However, he did not offer an explanation for the prevalence of white-collar crime. He also neglected to elaborate on why some formerly delinquent boys later became law-abiding. Many scholars and researchers in the criminology field have explored and tested his notion of the relationship between status deprivation and delinquency.