RUNNING HEADER: GENERAL STRAIN THEORY
How General Strain Theory Connects with Crime and Race
Jailyn Brown and Haile Contaste
Criminal Justice 101
Professor Medhin
April 21,2017
RUNNING HEADER: GENERAL STRAIN THEORY
Robert Agnew is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Sociology at Emory University and past-president of the American Society of Criminology where he founded General Strain Theory. General Strain Theory is considered to be a solid theory, and has accumulated a significant amount of empirical evidence, and has also expanded its primary scope by offering explanations of phenomena outside of criminal behavior. It provides a broader range of negative emotions, and introduced the concept of conditioning factors and coping
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Subjective stains are connected to emotional response when a person dislikes something or someone that acts as a strain, while objectives strains are described as a group of people that dislike something such as children in a divorce. In examining juvenile delinquency and its connection to general strain theory (GTS), there are three groups of stressors or strains that is believed to increase criminal activity(Peck). The first group is not being able to achieve goals, the second groups is positive stimuli removed, and the third groups is negative stimuli being present. Among juveniles it is believed strains such as child abuse or rejection, divorce, low or negative environment, poor schooling, discrimination etc., may cause more crime than others(Peck). Understanding a more define connection between general strain theory and juvenile delinquency is the breakdown among racial factors and strains that may affect one group more than the other. Minorities such as blacks and Hispanics are more like to be charged with more serious crimes than whites(Peck). The reason being is because minorities may have more stains such as poverty, discrimination, and criminal victimization. These strains can leave a damper on the growth of one group of people when there is various amount of strains to keep a group from progressing. Often as a young minority, juveniles are taught by their environment or parents on how to survive in America. Which is not always positive and due to stereotypes set by society, it can become easier for a minority to be mistaken as a criminal and soon follow in the footsteps of a