Factors Affecting Criminal & Deviant Behaviour: Age (AQA GCSE Sociology): Flashcards

Young people, especially young males, are more likely to engage in criminal activity than older people.

Young people tend to commit relatively minor offences, such as theft and handling stolen goods.

False.

Young people are more likely to reoffend than adults.

The search for excitement helps explain youth crime because young people find rule-breaking exciting, as it causes an adrenaline rush.

The New Right argues inadequate socialisation of the underclass leads to crime, as fatherless families lack strong male role models.

Agencies of socialisation may fail because parents may not supervise their children, schools may fail to discipline them and the mass media glamorises gun crime and violence.

Cohen (1955) found delinquency is more of a group issue, as boys learn to become delinquent by joining gangs where it already exists.

Working-class boys experience educational failure and poor employment prospects, as schools are middle-class institutions.

Cohen argued that working-class boys suffer from status frustration, so they turn to crime as an alternative route to success.

According to Cohen, joining a criminal subculture benefits working-class boys because they gain status and acceptance within their group and hit back at the school system that labelled them as failures.