¶ … Saints and the Roughnecks by William Chambliss is a masterpiece study in Seattle suburb in the 1970s and it demonstrates the significance of connecting the macro and micro factors together. (Conformity, deviance and Crime) The Saints and the Roughnecks were two clusters of boys from the same Hanibal High School, who got involved in the same kinds of abnormal behaviors but were branded differently by the public. (Violence; Disease or Attitude) The Saints belonged to upper-middle-class families, while the Roughnecks belonged to a lower socioeconomic setting. (Conformity, deviance and Crime) The saints were a cluster of eight young men of fine, steady, white upper-middle class families on the pre-college track in high school, who were vigorous in school affairs, who associate in unbelievably large amounts of absenteeism, much of drinking and driving, quite a bit of little stealing and vandalism, and loads of deceiving in school, but cope up to uphold a fine appearance. (Theories of Deviance: Conflict Theory)
The Saints were extremely triumphant in school. The typical grade for the group was 'B' with two of the boys having almost a straight 'A' average. Nearly all of the boys were famous and many of them held offices in the school. For one year, one of the boys was vice president of the student body. Six of the boys participated in athletic teams. At the end of their senior year, the student body had chosen ten seniors for special credit as the 'school wheels'; among the ten, four were Saints. (The Saints and the Roughnecks) As teachers had tall hopes for the Saints, they allowed many things to slip when it came to those boys. (Violence; Disease or Attitude)
The everyday anxiety of Saints was to escape from school at the earliest possible time. The boys somehow escaped from school with least risk that they would be blamed of playing hooky through an involved method for getting rightful discharge from class. Having eloped from the solid corridors the boys generally went either to a pool hall on the other lower class side of town or to a cafe in the suburbs. While community inhabitants were aware that these boys infrequently planted a few wild oats, they were entirely ignorant that planting wild oats fully engaged the daily routine of these young men. Their method for concealing absence was so triumphant that teachers did not even recognize that the boys were missing from school most of the time. (The Saints and the Roughnecks)
Deceiving on examinations was widespread in case of Saints as per Chambliss. A boy who was trapped would be most apologetic, would beg culpable and ask for forgiveness. He got the sympathy he wanted as anticipated. Teachers played a part to the dishonesty in their disclosed leaning to give these boys the advantage of the suspicion. When inquired how the boys did in school, and when urged on particular examinations, teachers may confess that they were dissatisfied in John's performance, but would promptly add that they knew that he was competent of doing better, so John was granted a higher grade than he had really got. But Chambliss says that all through the time that he studied the group, he not at all observed any of the boys take homework to home. (Violence; Disease or Attitude) The Saints were perceived by the local police as good boys and believed them to be among the leaders of the youth in the community. The boys were seldom stopped in town for speeding or for rushing a stop sign. When this occurred the boys were always courteous, apologetic and pled for forgiveness. (The Saints and the Roughnecks)
In contrast, the roughnecks are a cluster of six lower-class boys who engage in lots of fighting, generally among themselves or with other lower-class boys and stealing, who are frequently detained, and whose image in the community is awful. (Theories of Deviance: Conflict Theory) The community viewed the Roughnecks as poorly dressed, ill mannered, poor who were moving towards difficulty. Teachers were fully alert on the status of these boys and dealt with them in a different way. (Violence; Disease or Attitude) Teachers, in contrast, viewed the Roughnecks as approaching trouble, as being unconcerned in making something of them. Although most of them went to school more often than the Saints, the cluster of boys had a grade point average just a little above 'C'. They were very steady in their attainment or, in any case, the teachers were steady in their view of the boy's attainment. This disparity in handling towards the boys caused them to consider themselves in a different way. The boys concurred...
Saints and Roughnecks was the title given to Chambliss' 1973 study in which he found that class and not crime often determines a person's reputation in the society and his fate with the police. The author, William Chambliss' selected two different groups of teenagers for his study, one coming from affluent part of the metropolitan area and are labeled Saints for the study, while the other group came from lower-income
Saints and the Roughnecks - William J. Chambliss In his seminal essay "The Saints and the Roughnecks," William J. Chambliss studied how a community's differential perceptions led to preferential treatment of a group of juvenile delinquents from upper-middle class families over another gang of delinquents from lower-class families. The main determinant for a community's reaction to a juvenile's deviant behavior was socioeconomic class. Since this essay's publication in 1973, the idea that
In his concluding questions, Chambliss notes these reactions, questioning how the meanings that were assigned to both groups by the townspeople, school officials, and police affected their futures. For this reason, Symbolic Interaction theory can be applied to the case of the Saints and the Roughnecks. In assigning values to both groups, members outside of these groups most likely impacted the groups' futures, according to Chambliss. The decisions of the
When speaking of visibility and demeanor, he refers to the fact that the Saints had access to vehicles to take them out of the eyes of their regular neighborhood, where as the boys did not have this privilege and therefore had to commit their delinquent acts directly under the eyes of the community. When discussing bias, he refers to the class structure and how the elite tend to view
Saints The Roughnecks and the Saints: A Research Overview The essential problem that the researcher set out to address in this article was the perception of and reaction to delinquency amongst teenagers in a specific town. more specifically, the researcher ended up identifying a difference in the way teenage boys of different socioeconomic backgrounds were viewed by teachers, the police, and other community members in light of their delinquency, though it
Reflection: Saints and RoughnecksIn his essay �The Saints and the Roughnecks� William Chambliss examines a curious phenomenon in high school: while delinquent behavior was common among boys of various social classes at Hannibal High School, only the negative behaviors of the lower-class, less academically inclined boys was viewed as delinquent. The clean-cut, high-achieving so-called Saints often cut class early, hung out at pool halls, and, objectively speaking, engaged in more
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