General Strain Theory Of Criminal Behavior Essay

In today’s society, deviance is a part of every human being on this earth, but it could mostly be a part of the younger generation because individuals start criminal behavior at a young age. They are being targeted because some of them tend to be naive and do not have any experience in the world. Young teens are getting peer pressured into engaging in situations they should not be a part of, especially in the beginning of their freshmen year. Since, they are attempting to make new friends it gives them a sense of belonging, so they make the decision to commit crimes to be a part of a group they wish to be in. “Long ago, building on Beccaria's ([1764] 1963) ideas about crime and punishment, Jeremy Bentham ([1789] 1948) formalized and popularized

In other words, they start to commit crimes and use this as a coping mechanism to deal with the stress. The main assumptions of this theory are that everyone experiences stress, which gives them the negative emotions that could lead to finding things to cope with and most of the time it is committing crimes. This theory focuses on the micro-level because it is with the individual, it could potentially focus on the macro-level because of group differences such as, age, gender, and race. The stressors could be within the family members. The strengths for this theory are that it provides a different variety of stressors that can be dealt with either through therapy or finding healthy ways to cope such as writing in a journal or painting. Anomie is what someone is experiencing when they do not reach their specific goals. This could make them feel worthless and trying to achieve any goal is pointless. “Merton’s (1957) anomie theory was considered as an alternative to the general strain theory but found that the former focused primarily on the conflict between socially accepted and not accepted norms for success, resulting in the person engaging in deviant behaviors, but did not expand further to address the outcomes of the deviant behaviors such as social and psychological strain” (Mubarak and Quinn, 2019). Robert Merton mentions that there are five ways

He mentions that society has conflicts due to completing for limited resources. This brings individuals to for fight certain things like ideas, standards, or behaviors. Hence this theory can be seen in many different places such as the government, education, and religion. This theories argument is that it holds social order which is being maintained by domination and power. It is not maintained by conformity and consensus. The main assumptions for this theory are that humans are self-interested meaning that they only want things for themselves because it only helps them. Another is that society operates with the resources they have, therefore that is why it is limited. The last assumption is that conflicts can be persuasive which will make people act on it. This theory focuses on the macro-level because it is talking about groups, which examines the power between these specific groups. The strengths for this theory are that it tries to balance the scales by having resources and to advocate. This seeks out the discrepancies in the resources they provide for those who are in power and who are not. It inspects policies and the way it impacts individuals who are not represented. Some weaknesses this theory has is that it does not recognize the importance race, ethnicity, age, gender, or if someone has a disability. This gets overlooked because of the how some individuals want to identify and how they relate to