Strain Theory

According to strain theory, delinquency occurs when there is a lost connection between achieving one’s goals and the ability to actually achieve them. Society pressures individuals to achieve despite one's inabilities to. When the means of achieving these goals is illegal, delinquency occurs. Some of these goals are materialistic in the United States, such as a big house, a nice car, or wealth. To strain theorists, the ability to achieve one’s goals is dependent on their social class. Adults or children living in the lower classes are unable to fulfill their goals conventionally; this state fuels frustration and anger which can be referred to as their strain. Illegal ways of achieving their goals could include acts of violence and theft.
Historically,
there have been many theories to explain why people commit crime; the most opposing opinion to social control theory is a biological positivist perspective. In the biological positivist perspective, theorists believe that a person is born with curtain mental traits that predispose them to crime. This is contrary to social control because one's predisposition to crime will never change because it is ingrained in them biologically; social control theories would argue that predispositions change with a child's circumstance. An even more dated theory called the anthropological theory states that certain physical traits are the reason people become criminals (Varying Theories par. 4). For this theory, they studies criminal’s physical characteristics and took the most common one, for example a big nose, and tried to use such information to predict who else would become a criminal in their lifetime. Both the biological positivist perspective and the anthropological theory are opposing positions to social control and economic strain theory because they assume crime inevitable for some individuals, despite their social circumstances.

Through juvenile case studies, it can be justified that social control plays a role in child deviance, as well as economic strain; here are three examples.
The first case is Rebecca Falcon who was fifteen years old when she was sentenced to life for the murder of a cab driver in Florida. Falcon grew up in Kansas where she was sexually abused by her stepdad and boys in her peer group. Her mom later sent her to live with her grandmother in Florida. When viewing Falcon's case from her four pillars of social control, it is obvious that there were inconsistencies and break downs in her peer and family pillars. Having been molested by her stepdad and then booted off to Florida because her parents could not handle her individual problem, Falcon had little in her family pillar to show for. Aside from her family pillar, there was arguable a worst destruction in her peer influence pillar. In her early teens, Falcon was physically and sexually assaulted by schoolmates and friends which would later lead to poor peer choices. After moving to Florida with an already shattered peer pillar, Flacon began associated with deviant peers. Falcon was with an adult friend who had a gun in the cab when the driver was shot. Even though they both claim the other shot the driver, it is clear she rebuilt her peer pillar with negative influences. Rebecca Falcon’s case can be explained through social control theory because she had a break down in her pillars as Reiss described in his theory on
deviance. The second case of Keaira Brown from Wyandotte County Kansas, is another example of child deviance after there is a break down in one of her four social pillars described by social control theory. Brown had a steady life; she was involved in after school programs and her family was sending two kids to college, but when her mom went to prison, Browns family pillar crumbled. Brown became suicidal and three years later kill a man in his car. Because of her actions, the judge waved Brown to an adult trial where she was found guilty of first-degree murder and attempted aggravated robber. She is facing twenty years until she is eligible for parole. The third and final case proves that economic strain, the inability to achieve what is desired, is a driving force for juvenile delinquents to commit crimes. In January of 2001, James Parker (16) and Robert Tulloch (18) killed a couple in their own home for financial gain. The two boys entered the Zantop's home and demanded their ATM cards with the pins before they brutally stabbed the couple the couple to death. In total, the boys made out with $340. After running away, Parker and Tulloch were arrested. The two boys disclosed that they wanted to travel to Australia but have no financial way of getting there; they had both discussed the morality of murder, but they later decided it was worth the financial gain. Parker was tried as an adult for the killing and received twenty-five years in prison after a plea agreement; Tulloch was sentenced to life without parole and showed no remorse.