1. Opportunity Structures
Crime and Deviance
Opportunity Structures
Criminal
Conflict
Retreatist
Teaching Notes
Cloward and Ohlin (1960) also noted a different form of reactive subculture that developed in terms of:
Opportunity structures: Like Merton they noted the significance of “legitimate opportunity structures” (such as work) as a way of achieving success. However, these were paralleled by "illegitimate opportunity structures" that provided an “alternative career structure” for deviants. They suggested three types of subcultural development:
Criminal, that developed in stable (usually working class) communities with successful criminal role models (“crime pays”) and a career structure for aspiring criminals.
Conflict: Without (structural) community support mechanisms, self-contained gang cultures developed, by providing “services” such as prostitution and drug-dealing.
Retreatist: Those unable to join criminal or conflict subcultures (failures, as it were, in both legitimate and illegitimate structures) retreated into “individualistic” subcultures based around drug abuse, alcoholism, vagrancy and so forth.
Cloward and Ohlin (1960) ©