Matza, David: Delinquency and Drift

Elliott Currie

David Matza's Delinquency and Drift , published in 1964, offers a complex and multilayered critique of what its author considered to be the dominant theories of juvenile delinquency at that time—indeed the dominant themes in criminology since the late 19th century. On one level, the book is a critique and reformulation of the major postwar subcultural theories of delinquency, including the work of Albert Cohen in Delinquent Boys and Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin in Delinquency and Opportunity . On another level, it represents an affirmation of some of the key themes of control theories of crime and delinquency, which were considerably less prominent in criminology in the 1950s and early 1960s than they are today. More generally, the work is a critique of what Matza describes as the core assumptions of criminological positivism, and a reaffirmation of some of the principles of the classical theories of Cesare Beccaria and ...

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