Why Do Individuals Engage in Crime OR Deviance Essay Example

goals. Structural strain is a process at a society level that determines how an individual identifies his or her needs. Merton’s theory also focuses on individual strain whereby a person does not care the means of achieving the social goals as long those targets are important. Thus, this resulted to people being members of a deviant culture to achieve the goals of life. The main critics of general strain theory was that it only applies to individuals of low class that struggle to meet their life goals and it also fails to explain white collar crimes.

Agnew’s theory also fails to explain the crimes based on gender inequality. Similarly, Merton’s theory deals with individuals responses to handle society pressure instead of a group in which crime is involved. This theory also is not very critical in analyzing the social structure that puts pressure to individuals to commit crime. Both theories confirm that people commit crimes as a result of external factors but not out of a person willingness to engage in deviant activities. Merton’s and Agnew’s theories also ascertain that individuals participate in criminal activities to achieve certain goals in life. They do not commit crime for fun but instead they have their own targets that they want to attain in order to live a good life.

Bibliography

1. Aseltine, R. & Gordon., S. C., 2000. Life Stress, Anger and Anxiety, and Delinquency. Journal of Health and Social Behaviour, Vol. 41(No. 3), pp. 256-275.
2. Baron, S., 2004. General Strain,Street Youth and Crime: A Test of Agnews Revised Theory.. 2nd Edition ed. New York: New York Publishers.
3. Robert, M., 1932. Social structure and Anomie. American Socialogical, Volume Vol. 3,
   

pp. 672-682.