Crime : Matza AO3

• -could be used to avoid punishment. Box suggests that evidence that criminals are remorseful may not be sincere.
• -predicts more delinquency than actually occurs.
• -allows no possibility of free will.
• -techniques of neutralisation may be deviant values.
• +young delinquents can grow into adulthood leading respectable lives.
• +Answers the criticisms to strain theory and subcultural theory, shows how we have free will and don't all stay 100% in our specific subcultures.
• +Downes and Rock: Matza describes the typical behaviour of most youths in Britain.
• -It makes no attempt to explain group delinquency in a wider framework or structural location of economic and social circumstances that drive male working-class youths into greater levels of delinquency than anyone else.
• -Taylor, Walton and Young raise doubts about the view that those who are using the techniques of neutralisation are never challenging the dominant values in society.
• -Carrabine states that Matza underestimates subcultural theory. 1 in 3 men born in a single month in 1953 had a criminal record by the age of 30.