“TECHNIQUES OF NEUTRALIZATION”

Gresham M. Sykes and David Matza (1957)

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In attempting to uncover the roots of juvenile delinquency, the social scientist has long since ceased to search for devils in the mind or stigma of the body.  It is now largely agreed that delinquent behaviour, like most social behaviour, is learned and that it is learned in the process of social interaction.

                The classic statement of this position is found in Sutherland’s theory of differential association, which asserts that criminal or delinquent behaviour involves the learning of (a) techniques of committing crimes and (b) motives, drives, rationalizations, and attitudes favourable to the violation of law.  Unfortunately, the specific content of what is learned – as opposed to the process by which it is learned – has received relatively little attention in either theory or research.  Perhaps the single strongest school of thought on the nature of this content has centred on the idea of a delinquent subculture.  The basic characteristic of the delinquent subculture, it is argued, is a system of values that represents an inversion of the values held by respectable, law abiding society,  the world of the delinquent is the world of the law-abiding turned upside-down and its norms constitute a countervailing force directed against the conforming social order.  Cohen sees the process of enveloping a delinquent subculture as a matter of building, maintaining, and reinforcing a code for behaviour which exists by opposition, which stands in point by point contradiction to dominant values, particularly those of the middle class.  Cohen’s portrayal of delinquency is executed with a good deal of sophistication, and he carefully avoids overly simple explanations such as those based on the principle of ‘follow the leader’ or easy generalizations about ‘emotional disturbances’.  Furthermore, he does not accept the delinquent subculture as something given, but instead systematically examines the function of delinquent values as a viable solution to the lower-class, male child’s problems in the area of social status.  Yet in spite of its virtues, this image of juvenile delinquency as a form of behaviour based on competing or countervailing values and norms appears to suffer from a number of serious defects.  It is the nature of these defects and a possible alternative or modified explanation for a large portion of the juvenile delinquency with which this paper is concerned.

                The difficulties in viewing delinquent behaviour as springing from a set of deviant values and norms – as arising, that is to say, from a situation in which the delinquent defines his delinquency as ‘right’ – are both empirical and theoretical.  In the first place, if there existed in fact a delinquent subculture such that the delinquent viewed his illegal behaviour as morally correct, we could reasonably suppose that he would exhibit no feelings of guilt or shame at detection or confinement.  Instead, the major reaction would tend in the direction of indignation or a sense of martyrdom.  It is true that some delinquents do react in the latter fashion, although the sense of martyrdom often seems to be based on the fact that others ‘get away with it’ and indignation appears to be directed against the chance events or lack of skill that led to apprehension.  More important, however, is the fact that there is a good deal of evidence suggesting that many delinquents do experience a sense of guilt or shame, and its outward expression is not to be dismissed as a purely manipulative gesture to appease those in authority.  Much of this evidence is, to be sure, of a clinical nature or in the form of impressionistic judgements of those who must deal first hand with the youthful offender.  Assigning a weight to such evidence calls for caution, but it cannot be ignored if we are to avoid the gross stereotype of the juvenile delinquent as a hardened gangster in miniature.

                In the second place, observers have noted that the juvenile delinquent frequently accords admiration and respect to law-abiding persons.  The ‘really honest’ person is often revered, and if the delinquent is sometimes overly keen to detect hypocrisy in those who conform, unquestioned probity is likely to win his approval.  A fierce attachment to a humble, pious mother or a forgiving, upright priest (the former, according to many observers, is often encountered in both juvenile delinquents and adult criminals) might be dismissed as rank sentimentality, but at least it is clear that the delinquent does not necessarily regard those who abide by the legal rules as immoral.  In a similar vein, it can be noted that the juvenile delinquent may exhibit great resentment if illegal behaviour is imputed to ‘significant others’ in his immediate social environment or to heroes in the world of sport and entertainment.  On other words, if the delinquent does hold to a set of values and norms that stand in complete opposition to those of respectable society, his norm-holding is of a particular sort.  While supposedly thoroughly committed to the deviant system of the delinquent subculture, he would appear to recognize the moral validity of the dominant normative system in many instances.

                In the third place, there is much evidence that juvenile delinquents often draw a sharp line between those who can be victimized and those who cannot.  Certain social groups are not to be viewed as ‘fair game’ in the performance of supposedly approved delinquent acts while others warrant a variety of attacks.  In general, the potentiality for victimization would seem to be a function of the social distance between the juvenile delinquent and others and thus we find implicit maxims in the world of the delinquent such as ‘don’t steal from friends’ or ‘don’t commit vandalism against a church of your own faith’.  This is all rather obvious, but the implications have not received sufficient attention.  The fact that supposedly valued behaviour tends to be directed against disvalued social groups hints that the ‘wrongfulness’ of such delinquent behaviour is more widely recognized by delinquents than the literature has indicated.  When the pool of victims is limited by consideration of kinship, friendship, ethnic group, social class, age, sex, etc., we have reason to suspect that the virtue of delinquency is far from unquestioned.

                In the fourth place, it is doubtful if many juvenile delinquents are totally immune from the demands for conformity made by the dominant social order.  There is a strong likelihood that the family of the delinquent will agree with respectable society that delinquency is wrong, even though the family may be engaged in a variety of illegal activities.  That is, the parental posture conducive to delinquency is not apt to be a positive prodding.  Whatever may be the influence of parental example, what might be called the ‘Fagin’ pattern of socialization into delinquency is probably rare.  Furthermore, as Redl has indicated, the idea that certain neighbourhoods are completely delinquent, offering the child a model for delinquent behaviour without reservations, is simply not supported by the data.

                […] As Morris Cohen once said, one of the most fascinating problems about human behaviour is why men violate the laws which they believe.  This is the problem that confronts us when we attempt to explain why delinquency occurs despite a greater or lesser commitment to the usages of conformity.  A basic clue is offered by the fact that social rules or norms calling for valued behaviour seldom if ever take the form of categorical imperatives.  Rather, values or norms appear as qualified guides for action, limited in their applicability in terms of time, place, persons, and social circumstances.  The moral injunction against killing, for example, does not apply to the enemy during combat in time of war, although a captured enemy comes once again under the prohibition.  Similarly, the taking and distributing of scarce goods in a time of acute social need is felt by many to be right, although under other circumstances private property is held unviolable.  The normative system of a society, then is marked by what Williams has termed flexibility; it does not consist of a body of rules held to be binding under all conditions.

                This flexibility is, in fact, an integral part of the criminal law in that measures for ‘defences to crimes’ are provided in pleas such as nonage, necessity, insanity, drunkenness, compulsion, self-defence, and so on.  The individual can avoid moral culpability for his criminal action – and thus avoid the negative sanctions of society – if he can prove that criminal intent was lacking.  It is our argument that much delinquency is based on what is essentially an unrecognized extension of defences to crimes, in the form of justifications for deviance that are seen as valid by the delinquent but not by the legal system or society at large.

                These justifications are commonly described as rationalizations.  They are viewed as following deviant behaviour and of protecting the individual from self-blame and the blame of others after the act.  But there is also reason to believe that they precede deviant behaviour and make deviant behaviour possible.  It is this possibility that Sutherland mentioned only in passing and that other writers have failed to exploit from the viewpoint of sociological theory.  Disapproval flowing from internalized norms and conforming others n the social environment is neutralized, turned back, or deflected in advance.  Social controls that serve to check or inhibit deviant motivational patterns are rendered inoperative, and the individual is freed to engage in delinquency without serious damage to his self-image.  In this sense, the delinquent bath has his cake and eats it too, for he remains committed to the dominant normative system and yet so qualifies its imperatives that violations are ‘acceptable’ if not ‘right’.  Thus the delinquent represents not a radical opposition to law-abiding society but something more like an apologetic failure, often more sinned against than sinning in his own eyes. We call these justifications of deviant behaviour techniques of neutralization; and we believe these techniques make up a crucial component of Sutherland’s ‘definitions favourable to the violation of law’.  It is by learning these techniques that the juvenile becomes delinquent, rather than by learning moral imperatives, values or attitudes standing in direct contradiction to those of the dominant society.  In analyzing these techniques, we have found it convenient to divide them into five major types.

                The denial of responsibility  In so far as the delinquent can define himself as lacking responsibility for his deviant actions, the disapproval of self or others is simply reduced in effectiveness as a restraining influence.  As Justice Holmes said, even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked, and modern society is no less careful to draw a line between injuries that are unintentional, i.e., where responsibility is lacking, and those that are intentional.  As a technique of neutralization, however, the denial of responsibility extends much further than the claim that deviant acts are an ‘accident’ or some similar negation of personal accountability.  It may also be asserted that delinquent acts are due to forces outside of the individual and beyond his control such as unloving parents, and companions or a slum neighbourhood.  In effect, the delinquent approaches a ‘billiard ball’ conception of himself in which he sees himself as helplessly propelled into new situations.  From a psychodynamic viewpoint, this orientation toward one’s own actions may represent a profound alienation from self, but it is important to stress the fact that interpretations of responsibility are cultural constructs and not merely idiosyncratic beliefs.  The similarity between this mode of justifying illegal behaviour assumed by the delinquent and the implications of a ‘sociological’ frame of reference or a ‘humane’ jurisprudence is readily apparent.  It is not the validity of this orientation that concerns us here, but its function of deflecting blame attached to violations of social norms and its relative independence of a particular personality structure.  By learning to view himself as more acted upon than acting, the delinquent prepares the way for deviance from the dominant normative system without the necessity of a frontal assault on the norms themselves.

                The denial of injury  A second major technique of neutralization centres on the injury or harm involved in the delinquent act.  The criminal law has long made a distinction between crimes which are mala in se and mala prohibita – that is between acts that are wrong in themselves and acts that are illegal but not immoral – and the delinquent can make the same kind of distinction in evaluating the wrongfulness of his behaviour.  For the delinquent, however, wrongfulness may turn on the question of whether or not anyone has clearly been hurt by his deviance, and this matter is open to a variety of interpretations.  Vandalism, for example, may be defined by the delinquent simply as ‘mischief’ – after all, it may be claimed, the persons whose property has been destroyed can well afford it.  Similarly, auto theft may be viewed as ‘borrowing’, and gang fighting may be seen as a private quarrel, an agreed upon duel between two willing parties, and thus of no concern to the community at large.  We are not suggesting that this technique of neutralization, labelled the denial of injury, involves an explicit dialectic.  Rather, we are arguing that the delinquent frequently, and in a hazy fashion, feels that his behaviour does not really cause any great harm despite the fact that it runs counter to the law.  Just as the link between the individual and his acts may be broken by the denial of responsibility, so may the link between acts and their consequences be broken by the denial of injury.  Since society sometimes agrees with the delinquent, e.g., in matters such as truancy, ‘pranks’, and so on, it merely reaffirms the idea that the delinquent’s neutralization of social controls by means of qualifying the norms is an extension of common practice rather than a gesture of complete opposition.

                The denial of the victim  Even if the delinquent accepts the responsibility for his deviant actions and is willing to admit that his deviant actions involve an injury or hurt, the moral indignation of self and others may be neutralized by an insistence that the injury is not wrong in light of the circumstances.  The injury, it may be claimed, is not really an injury; rather, it is a form of rightful retaliation or punishment.  By a subtle alchemy the delinquent moves himself into the position of the avenger and the victim is transformed into a wrong-doer.  Assaults on homosexuals or suspected homosexuals, attacks on members of minority groups who are said to have gotten ‘out of place’, vandalism as revenge on an unfair teacher or school official, thefts from a ‘crooked’ store owner – all may be hurts inflicted on a transgressor, in the eyes of the delinquent.  As Orwell has pointed out, the type of criminal admired by the general public has probably changed over the course of years and Raffles no longer serves as a hero; but Robin Hood, and his latter day derivatives such as the tough detective seeking justice outside the law, still capture the popular imagination, and the delinquent may view his acts as part of a similar role.

                To deny the existence of the victim, then, by transforming him into a person deserving injury is an extreme form of a phenomenon we have mentioned before, namely, the delinquent’s recognition of appropriate and inappropriate targets for his delinquent acts.  In addition, however, the existence of the victim may be denied for the delinquent, in a somewhat different sense, by the circumstances of the delinquent act itself.  In so far as the victim is physically absent, unknown or a vague abstraction (as is often the case in delinquent acts committed against property), the awareness of the victim’s existence is weakened.  Internalized norms and anticipations of the reactions of others must somehow be activated, if they are to serve as guides for behaviour; and it is possible that a diminished awareness of the victim plays an important part in determining whether or not this process is set in motion.

                The condemnation of the condemners  A fourth technique of neutralization would appear to involve a condemnation of the condemners or, as McCorkle and Korn have phrased it, a rejection of the rejecters.  The delinquent shifts the focus of attention from his own deviant acts to the motives of his violations.  His condemners, he may claim, are hypocrites, deviants in disguise, or impelled by personal spite.  This orientation toward the conforming world may be of particular importance when it hardens into a bitter cynicism directed against those assigned the task of enforcing or expressing the norms of the dominant society.  Police, it may be said, are corrupt, stupid and brutal.  Teachers always show favouritism and parents always ‘take it out’ on their children.  By a slight extension, the rewards of conformity – such as material success – become a matter of pull or luck, thus decreasing still further the stature of those who stand on the side of the law-abiding.  The validity of this jaundiced viewpoint is not so important as its function in turning back or deflecting the negative sanctions attached to violations of the norms.  The delinquent, in effect, has changed the subject of the conversation in the dialogue between his own deviant impulses and the reactions of others; and by attacking others, the wrongfulness of his own behaviour is more easily repressed or lost to view.

                The appeal to higher loyalties  Fifth, and last, internal and external social controls may be neutralized by sacrificing the demands of the larger society for the demands of the smaller social group to which the delinquent belongs such as the sibling pair, the gang, or the friendship clique.  It is important to note that the delinquent does not necessarily repudiate the imperatives of the dominant normative system, despite his failure to follow them.  Rather, the delinquent may see himself as caught up in a dilemma that must be resolved, unfortunately, at the cost of violating the law.  One aspect of this situation has been studied by Stouffer and Toby in their research on the conflict between particularistic and universalistic demands, between the claim of friendship and general social obligations, and their results suggest that ‘it is possible to classify people according to a predisposition to select one or the other horn of a dilemma in role conflict’.  For our purposes, however, the most important point is that deviation from certain norms may occur not because the norms are rejected, but because other norms, held to be more pressing or involving a higher loyalty, are accorded precedence.  Indeed, it is the fact that both sets of norms are believed in that gives meaning to our concepts of dilemma and role conflict.

                The conflict between the claims of friendship and the claims of law, or a similar dilemma, has of course long been recognized by the social scientist (and the novelist) as a common human problem.  If the juvenile delinquent frequently resolves his dilemma by insisting that he must ‘always help a buddy’ or ‘never squeal on a friend’, even when it throws him into serious difficulties with the dominant social order, his choice remains familiar to the supposedly law-abiding.  The delinquent is unusual, perhaps, in the extent to which he is able to see the fact that he acts in behalf of the smaller social groups to which he belongs as a justification for violations of society’s norms, but it is a matter of degree rather than of kind.

                ‘I didn’t mean it.’ ‘I didn’t do it for myself.’  These slogans or their variants, we hypothesize, prepare the juvenile for delinquent acts.  These ‘definitions of the situation’ represent tangential or glancing blows at the dominant normative system rather than the creation of an opposing ideology; and they are extensions of patterns of thought prevalent in society rather than something created de novo.

                Techniques of neutralization may not be powerful enough to fully shield the individual from the force of his own internalized values and the reactions of conforming others, for as we have pointed out, juvenile delinquent often appear to suffer from feelings of guilt and shame when called into account for their deviant behaviour.  And some delinquents may be so isolated from the world of conformity that techniques of neutralization are critical in lessening the effectiveness of social controls and that they lie behind a large share of delinquent behaviour.

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