Focal Concerns Theory

Walter B. Miller presented a pure cultural theory of gang delinquency in 1958 that has been generalized to the lower class. His theory, proposed in a short article titled “Lower Class Culture as a Generating Milieu of Gang Delinquency,” submitted that the lower class subscribed to a distinct criminogenic culture. Miller's explanation of delinquency is situated in depressed inner cities, wherein the majority of households are headed by females, implying that traditional values are not instilled because of inadequate discipline and role-modeling. Without middle-class values, the lower class operates according to focal concerns. Specified as trouble, toughness, smartness, excitement, fate, and autonomy, these concerns devalue conventional values and lead to gang formation. Smartness refers to the ability to “con” someone in real-life situations and brings respect for successful hustlers and con artists. A belief in fate—in predetermined outcomes—undermines the work ethic and sabotages self-improvement. Deviance is normal and to be expected in lower-class cultures because the focal concerns make conformity to criminal behavior as natural as acceptance of conventional mores for the middle class. Miller observed that juveniles accepting a preponderance of these “cultural practices which comprise essential elements of the total life pattern of lower class culture automatically violate legal norms.”

Evaluation of the theory has centered around two significant criticisms. First, some of the focal concerns contended to be exclusive to the lower class are also observable in the middle class. A second and more controversial issue concerns the use of race rather than class in assessing the relationship between delinquency, matriarchal households, and an exaggerated sense of masculinity associated with physical aggression.

Whereas Miller's focal concerns and related subcultural theories largely dominated criminological thought during the 1950s, the 1960s ushered in a number of interrelated social movements (including the civil rights crusade, anti-Vietnam War protests, and the counterculture). In varying degrees they expressed the same themes: distrust and defiance of authority that was perceived to be used by elite factions to create and maintain a social hierarchy, exploitation of crime and delinquency, and opposition to the oppressiveness of the criminal justice system. As bandwagon shifts to the political left transpired, labeling theory soon replaced subcultural explanations as the leading perspective on crime.

Although historical developments set into motion a chain of events that moved criminological theorizing away from the subculture, the theory was further marred by paradigmatic shifts in social science research methodology. The rise of positivism was especially critical of the criminogenic saliency of the subculture and delivered focal concerns theory a would-be deathblow. There was suddenly a disjuncture between the subculture approach and the new preferred theoretical-methodological symmetry: variable assignment, measurement, and analysis congruent with causality as established by levels of statistical correlation. Critics of subculture theory focused on the growing belief that acceptable science must subscribe to particular precepts that subculture explanations did not meet. The theory could not, via a variable analysis format, be adequately tested.

Perhaps more consequential to the demise of the focal concerns perspective was the notion of the theory's inherent “classism” in a society where social class and racial minority status were (and still are) strongly correlated. Despite the focal concerns perspective being logically applicable to the discussion of minority representation in the justice system, there have been few attempts by criminologists [Page 299]to do so, perhaps because of the general liberal and politically correct ideology characteristic of American higher education. Interesting and somewhat ironic, the original lower-class subjects whose behavior and collective values served as the empirical basis for Miller's original framework were lower-class northeastern Caucasian youth.

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