CRIME IN THE AREA

Crime in urban communities is quite a persistent issue, especially in regards to

the multicultural neighborhoods in Los Angeles. The present paper aims to study the

problem of crime in a particular community, and how the subculture approach can be

served as means of identification of this notion. In our case, crime in Los Angeles can

be explicitly demonstrated by Boyle Heights, the community which consists mostly of

Latin Americans.

The subculture theory, which has been developed by Cohen in 1955 is an

attempt to examine youth subcultures, manifesting their protest against the dominant

culture.

The subcultures emerge in the slums of some nation’s largest cities, often

rooted in class differentials, parental aspirations and school standards.

Cohen notes that the position of one’s family in the social structure

determines some problems which a child might face later in his life. Thus,

they will experience status frustration and strain and adapt into either a

corner boy, college boy, or a delinquent boy. (Eve, 1978, p. 116)

Corner boys are conventional in terms of lifestyle and, therefore, they receive

considerable support in group activities. Such individuals often fail to meet academic

standards and, thus receive poor education, which doesn’t allow them to penetrate to

the middle-class environment (Paulsen & Robinson, 2004).

Delinquent boys, on the contrary, form bands and gangs as an attempt to define

social and group positions. They do not possess some specific aim; their disobedience

and criminal behavior can be seen as purposeless to some extend, but, in fact, such

young people steal in order to establish themselves as personalities and support their

hedonistic lifestyles. Again, the latter purpose is of less significance, compared to the

manifestation of subculture identity. Moreover, corner boys can participate in theft and

robbery to attain peer support, whereas most delinquent boys show subconsciously

their “scorn” for middle-class values by means of stealing.

Residential patterns in Los Angeles refer to traditions, rather than models of

communities, but Boyle Heights is an exception from the common rule. Initially this area

was seized by Jewish Americans, and in 1980s they became replaced by Hispanic and

Latino Americans. The community profile is nowadays depicted in quite pessimistic

outlook, since it frequently endures funding deficiencies, high unemployment rates, as

well as problems with universal access to public education. Therefore, using the

framework, prepared by Paulsen and Robinson (2004) one can assume that the public

space lacks safety patterns, taking into consideration the fact that the neighborhood has

been substantially impoverished after the withdrawal of Jewish Americans, whose

culture normally implies the development of domestic infrastructure (Vincent, 2008). The

recent housing project, designed to address the needs of citizens dwelling in The Flats,

or the poorest part of the neighborhood, failed not a long ago owing to the collapse of

the American commercial sector supporting the long-term housing program.

According to Vincent (2008), “In 80s, he [the respondent] said, drug dealers

trolled the neighborhood, drunks stumbled about and young gang members shot it out.

One of his sons was assaulted once and his car was shot up one day” (p. 4). In these

times, the criminality rate in this neighborhood is 30 per cent higher than the average

Los Angeles index; this fact certainly causes the concerns of law enforcement agencies,

but the efforts, ordered at the level of the city government, have appeared to be

insufficient, as the local police officers also belong to the specified community and often

originate from the same circles as gang members (Vincent, 2008). Therefore, it is

possible to speak about subculture identity in the given case; moreover, the criminal unit

is vast in Boyle Heights and surprisingly covers the groups of non-delinquent profile

(e.g. qualified workers, who remain unemployed, and are able to successfully earn their

living).

The two major dimensions, the delinquent subculture is cultivated from are local

schools and local construction sites. It needs to be noted, however, that the latter

dimension reflects in some way the former one, as both actually depend on two

undermining tendencies, which are the spread of unsound leisure practices and the

inhibition of leadership inclinations in the majority of subculture members.

As the teachers of the community school suggest, it is not “fashionable” in Boyle

Heights to have high academic achievement; on the contrary, the local leisure culture

existing among school students, implies constant search for adventures till the late

night. Therefore, underage community members simply have no opportunity to behave

like “college boys”, as they normally fail to prepare their home assignments given the

above described leisure culture. As mentioned above, the neighborhood has quite poor

infrastructure that includes a number of abandoned shops or accommodations that

served various “civilized” purposes in the past, but nowadays can be found half-ruined.

These are major places of interest attributed to local young males, as insufficient

budgeting has reduced the local educators’ motivation for arranging more useful and

healthy leisure activities for students. According to Weisburd and Lum (2005),

minimization of opportunities for the commitment of transgression is amongst the most

mportant components of crime prevention; in this sense, the abundance of uncontrolled
places in Boyle Heights becomes a determinative factor is the persistence of the
pathological identity.
Furthermore, the strength of the criminal subculture is increased by the size of
the group of corner boys, described as the main “executors” in the gang, due to their
compliance with the internal norms. Leadership skills are normally nurtured in families
and classrooms; but the profile of the average community member (manual worker,
non-management) points to the fact that the patterns of cognitive and emotional
independence are not popular in the community; moreover, the lack of educational
initiatives aims at raising students’ self-awareness, and determines schools failure to
fully address the issue of leadership. The “college boy” identity is the major object of
school students’ bullying, which might refer to the antagonism between the broad lowermiddle
class and relatively underrepresented class of white collars (upper-middle). The
intensity of group pressure has already been depicted above: those whose lifestyles
have been “intellectualized” and who have upgraded their socioeconomic background
are often physically assaulted and their property becomes the target of vandalism (e.g.
car destruction). These are the main reasons why the criminal subculture actually
dominates in Boyle Heights.