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Criminal Behavior In Elijah Anderson's The Code Of The Street

475 Words2 Pages

Like many other attitudes and behaviors, we acquire in life, we can also learn how to be a willing participant in criminal behavior by being taught to do so. A child learns by observing others that they are in direct contact with and then imitate what they have observed, which carries on into adulthood. Of course, there are several environmental factors that can play into whether an individual learns to be a criminal or not, and those can boil down to where they live, how their family environment is, who they grow up around, their parents’ job or lack thereof, etc. Based off the text, Elijah Anderson’s The Code of the Street, criminal behavior is learned through this code that spells out how criminal behavior is learned, what it entails, how it is executed, and how it is passed down from family to …show more content…

That to me seems to be limiting the theory by only focusing on one race group, stating that only poor, black areas are where the code exists and operates. Though it does mention the stigma of race, using the terms “ghetto” and “street kids” is insinuating that all areas where black people living in poor areas are crime ridden areas. Another weakness is the part where “decent families” are discussed. According to the text, decent families and street families live in the same area but live by a vastly different set of values and rules. It’s a very black and white theory where families are either “street” or “decent”. That doesn’t give any room for exceptions or any shades of grey, which seems to be exclusionary. What about the “decent” families who are non-violent but break the law out of necessity? Since they’re included in the working poor, they might need to resort to stealing in order to

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The Rizzuto Family Case Study

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Sutherland’s first three principles discuss how criminal behaviour is learned within intimate personal groups and through a process of communication (Lilly, Ball & Cullen, 2015, p. 45). This fits with the family. One can use Leonardo as an example. Due to the fact that he grew up in a family that was very involved with crime, Leonardo would have been exposed with criminal culture growing up more than conventional culture, which according to Sutherland, would allow him to accept the criminal lifestyle easier. This point also fits in with principle six states that a person will get involved in criminal activity due to: “an excess of definitions favorable to violation of law over definitions unfavorable to violation of the law” (Lilly, Ball & Cullen, 2015, p. 45).

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Analysis Of Elijah Anderson's Code Of The Street

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There comes a time in everyone's life where an individual has to weed out the positive and negative consequences of each action. With that, each of these individuals go about surviving this thing called life in various ways. With the increasing fluctuation of real life situations, these individuals reflect their actions by reacting and abiding by Elijah Anderson's (1999) Code of the Street. In Elijah Anderson's (1999) book Code of the Street, examples of different individuals and their specific situations are addressed and closely analyzed. In this paper, I will elaborate and further explain Anderson's Code of the Street.

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'Code Of The Street' By Elijah Anderson

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Elijah Anderson, a Yale professor, developed the concept or theory entitled the “code of the street” which explains the reasoning for high rates of street violence among African-American juveniles in a Philadelphia community. The “code of the street” is the way of life for many living in poverty-stricken communities which attempt to regulate behaviors. Anderson observed that juveniles in inner-city neighborhoods who are exposed to racial discrimination, economic disadvantages and alienation from mainstream society may lead violent behavior. The strain, social learning, and labeling theories are all directly related to Anderson’s work.

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Leaving the only options for an ethnicities high crime rate and low educational success to cultural values or biological inferiority instead of a by-product of economic disadvantage. Continuing to state that the history of racism has done undo-able damage to cultural integrity and community among blacks with information such as “…deterioration of the Negro society…is from deterioration of the Negro family…with the source of weakness being the Negro community…” (Moynihan, 120). Implying that society provides opportunities for class mobility and it is black cultural institutes that are

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Summary Of Code Of The Streets By Elijah Anderson

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In Chapter 12 of Readings for Sociology, Garth Massey included and piece titled “The Code of the Streets,” written by Elijah Anderson. Anderson describes both a subculture and a counterculture found in inner-city neighborhoods in America. Anderson discusses “decent families,” and “street families,” he differentiates the two in in doing so he describes the so called “Code of the Streets.” This code is an exemplifies, norms, deviance, socialization, and the ideas of subcultures and countercultures.

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Analysis Of Code Of The Street By Elijah Anderson

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Society is structured so that the association of normality goes to the diffuse status characteristics of: white, man, heterosexual, and masculine. From a Symbolic Interactionist perspective, the expectations of people based on the stereotypes constructed by people of that particular society create a process of socialization where individuals are categorized and analyzed based on the norms of that society. The classifications of what is and is not normal for a category has created norms of how people should look, behave, think, feel, and even influences how they identify themselves. This process of classification negatively impacts the psychological aspect of many people’s health. Two of the largest aspects of psychology altered by categorization

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The code of the street can be used to explain differences in crime rates between adjacent neighborhoods. Stewart & Simons (2010), conversed the difficulties of inner-city life for citizens in structurally deprived vicinities. He painted the physical and ethnic influences leading to violence. Anderson (1999) argued that the extraordinary rates of poverty, unemployment, violence, cultural discernment, isolation, distrust of police, and hopelessness that portray many underprivileged settings have led to a neighborhood street

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These attributes can be something that a person has no control over, such as their race or socio-economic background. Criminalization is not often based on laws, but instead revolves around customs that others have been understood as good or bad, which can later lead to laws. This idea consists of the reinterpretation of everyday actions or ideas and vilifying them (Merry 14 -15). In the cases of children there exists the idea that a child who commits a violent and heinous crime will only become more violent and will continue to commit crimes. Therefore, once a despicable act has been committed by a child he or she becomes labeled as a violent criminal.

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This theory clearly rules out the effect of inherited or innate factors, and the last is the cognitive theory, which is based on how the perception of an individual is manifested into affecting his or her potential and capability to commit a crime. (Psychological theories of crime) Relating these theories to the case under study, it’s clear that the behaviour can be traced most times to faulty relationships in the family during the first years of

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It shows that the behavior is being learned and crimes are being continually committed even if those who get caught are taken out of the area. The Theory of Differential Association can be tested by looking at the children in areas of high-crimes versus areas of low-crime. Crimes are continually being committed in the high-crime areas and those areas of low-crime are staying at the same rate of being low-crime, standing with the claim of the theory that crime is a learned behavior. One can test the validity of this theory by

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This process has nine components (Cullen, 2014). The first is criminal behavior is learned not inherited. Second, the Criminal behavior is learned in interaction with other persons in a process of communication. Third, the principal part of the learning of criminal behavior occurs within intimate personal groups. Fourth, When criminal behavior is learned, the learning includes (a) techniques of committing the crime, which is sometimes very complicated, sometimes simple; (b) the specific direction of motives, drives, rationalizations, and attitudes.

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For example those who follow the code of the street, that may mean beating someone up to make themselves feel more powerful, but they had to learn that from somewhere as they can not only learn things from their direct experiences but there is also a high chance that they have seen exposed to others that do the same exact thing. Differential association theory which is a strain of social learning theory, explains that criminal behaviour, and the specific techniques that one needs to know to commit crime are learned. This relates to the code of the street because those who abide by it are not only taught the violent or criminal behaviour but are also taught the motivating factors that back up the behaviour. All the residents that follow the street code do because that is what is they are surrounded with and according to the social learning theory, which is explains that crime is learned, they watch how others deal with things and use that as a model. It is a cognitive process in which one’s attitude and their surroundings merge in an ongoing conditioning theory.

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