Gangs, networks, and subcultural delinquency.

Major theorists have tended to equate peer-based delinquency and gang delinquency. Acceptance of this assumption hinders theoretical and empirical understanding of deviant youth cultures. Subcultural delinquency involves shared symbols-such as deviant values and speech-as well as behavior that is potentially noticeable by officials. Through the utilization of separate measures of shared symbolic deviance and interaction patterns, evidence is presented to support the contention that the cultural and social boundaries of a deviant youth culture have distinct referents and that the social unit of a subculture is most accurately described as a network of pairs, triads, groups with names, and groups without names. Since the ground-breaking studies of Shaw and McKay,2 and particularly since the publication of Cohen's Delinquent Boys,3 many American sociologists have insisted that a significant manifestation of masculine youthful misconduct is the "tradition," "way of life," or "subculture" of deviant peer groups and that the most serious forms of officially known male juvenile delinquency can be described as distinctively subcultural phenomena. The usual method of describing and "proving" the existence of a distinct way of life among delinquents has been by means of case studies of street gangs. Cohen,4 Miller,5 and Cloward and Ohlin,6 for example, offer as their supporting data anecdotes, participant-observation reports, impressions of gang workers, journalistic writings, and excerpts from interviews with gang members. These and other theorists have tended to assume that peer-based delinquency is predominantly gang delinquency. It is the contention of this paper-supported by empirical evidence-that this assumption hinders our understanding of deviant youth subcultures. The concept "subculture" refers to shared symbols, not to a specific type of interaction pattern. From the point of view of this paper, a delinquent subculture can be said to exist if a relationship is found between shared symbols (deviant values and deviant speech, or argot) and behavior that is potentially noticeable by officials. The social context of this shared deviance can be quite varied and should be addressed empirically and theoretically. In the following pages, we shall first consider the tendency to view the gang as the sole subcultural unit, drawing on published studies for support of our position that the gang has been overemphasized. The second half of the paper empirically examines vari'Adapted from Paul Lerman, "Issues in Subcultural Delinquency" (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1966). The study was conducted under the auspices of the Columbia University School of Social Work, Mobilization for Youth Research Project, Dr. Richard A. Cloward, project director. It was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (Contract MH-0117801). A special grant by the Ford Foundation made my participation in the construction of the survey instrument possible. 2Clifford R. Shaw and Henry D. McKay, Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942). 'Albert K. Cohen, Delinquent Boys (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1955). 4 Ibid. 'Walter B. Miller, "Lower-Class Culture as a Generating Milieu of Gang Delinquency," Journal of Social Issues, XIV (Summer, 1958), 5-9. 'Richard A. Cloward and Lloyd E. Ohlin, Delinquency and Opportunity (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1960).