Crime and The American Dream - Essay Example

American Dream Affiliation This essay Analyses the Anomie theory and how the American Dream contributes to high levels of crime in the country. The essay uses primary sources to attain a better understanding of this theory.Analysis America is a country of liberty and privilege and individuality where people enjoy their freedoms, however, there is always an abundance of crime. According to Richard Rosenfield and F. Messner’ theory, they believe that this privileged status contributes to high rates of criminal activity in the area.

Americans have high rates of criminal activity in the world. (Messner, & Rosenfeld, 2012) Americans have high cultural and social conditions that they aspire to fulfil in their life. Americans have adopted a capitalistic society that leads to lack of social control and deviant behaviour. The American has adopted a capitalistic society that leads to lack of social control and deviant behaviour. The American Dream refers to broad cultural ethos that has a goal of success open to competition. Americans are socialized to believe that they can achieve it regardless of nay obstacles, since it is a free country of equal opportunities (Messner, & Rosenfeld, 2012).

This Dream has a distorted the values of Americans where they focus on monetary success and disregard happiness with commitment to acquire material gains. This has created a culture of prioritizing material gain using illegitimate methods to gain success that results in anomic imbalance in the society (Maume, & Lee, 2003). The Anomies means disintegration of social controls that produce high likelihoods of deviant behaviour that leads to the breakdown of morals in the society. America has a set of norms and values that distinguish its culture from others which explains the foundation of Americans are resistance to social control and hence culpable to criminal temptation, This means that norms and values that are supposed to mould the cultural and social stamina in America is the main motivator of high rates of criminal behaviour, and the values are individualism, achievement, orientation and materialism.

The American society looks at its social worth by what it accomplishes since it is the primary objective. The methods used to get to such a point are disregarded since the focus is the end goal. In the pursuit of success, this means that one must also achieve their own success thus creating competition in the society rather than moulding collaboration. This demotivates use of legal means especially to those with limited resources (Agnew, 1992). These values mould the minds of Americans in such a way to legitimize harmful means of achieving success, and this creates an obsession with crime.

The Anomie theory integrates the concepts why American Dream leads to high crime rates. It’s clear that the stronger the non-economic social institutions that lower the poverty impact has high crime rate.Conclusion Crime reduction would be attained if there are policies that are able to strengthen the social structure and be able to weaken criminogenic qualities in the culture of Americans. Reducing crime rates would be possible if policies were strengthened in schools, political systems and emphasize family goals to combat economic gains strained on families and individuals.

This change in policies would place a norm of rethinking of a dream that is the envy of the world. The American dream is placed highly as the main contributor to high rates of crime and therefore the society should be tamed on reducing individualism and materialism values to reduce emphasis on monetary gains that define success and change the way Americans think. This will change Americans focus on communal and family principles that create holistic values in their education and political systems.

ReferencesAgnew, R. (1992). Foundation for a general strain theory of crime and delinquency*. Criminology, 30(1), 47-88.Maume, M. O., & Lee, M. R. (2003). Social institutions and violence: a sub‐national test of institutional anomie theory*. Criminology, 41(4), 1137-1172.Messner, S., & Rosenfeld, R. (2012). Crime and the American dream. Cengage Learning