Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

Agnew’s general strain theory (GST) has received significant empirical attention, but important issues remain unresolved. This study addresses three such issues. First, the authors examine the effects of bullying—a source of strain that may be consequential, but that has been neglected in GST research to date. Second, drawing from recent research on deliberate self-harm among adolescents, the authors examine the effects of bullying not just on externalizing deviance (aggressive acts committed against others and their property) but also on internalizing deviance directed against the self. Third, the authors examine these relationships separately for males and females to assess sex differences in responses to strain. These three issues are examined with self-report data collected from a sample of middle and high school students in a Southeastern state. The analysis reveals that bullying is consequential for both externalizing and internalizing forms of deviance and that these relationships are in some instances moderated by sex.

Explanations of prison violence and other forms of misconduct have been dominated by three competing models: (a) the deprivation model, (b) the importation model, and (c) the coping model. We propose that these three seemingly competing models can be integrated within Agnew’s general strain theory (GST). GST enriches the deprivation model by revealing three distinctive categories of strain. GST encompasses the importation model in hypothesizing that criminal cultural values and affiliations will structure the response to the strains of imprisonment. And GST incorporates the coping model in its emphasis on how social support, social capital, and human capital can blunt the effects of potentially criminogenic strains. Finally, GST is sufficiently broad to include factors (e.g., emotions, self-control) in the explanation of prison maladjustment not covered by the three main models of prison inmate behavior. In short, GST offers a general integrated framework for reconceptualizing our understanding of prison violence and misconduct.

General strain theory (GST) argues that strain (i.e., stress) leads to negative emotion and that negative emotion leads to criminal behavior. Though GST has received a significant amount of empirical support, tests of GST have focused primarily on the relationship between stress, anger, and interpersonal aggression. Much of past GST research has therefore neglected the idea that different types of strain might produce different negative emotions aside from anger and that different negative emotions might produce different types of criminal involvement aside from interpersonal aggression. This article investigates these possibilities. Literature from the social psychology of emotion is used to develop hypotheses that are tested through a vignette study. Results indicate that certain situations produce certain emotions more so than others but that negative emotions often co-occur. Some negative emotions precipitate criminal involvement, whereas others inhibit criminal tendencies.

Although general strain theory highlights the role of affective processes in the development of offending behavior, the theory also recognizes the role of cognition. In fact, Agnew and other theorists assert that affective and cognitive processes are interrelated and function together in producing crime and delinquency. In the case of aggression, for example, chronic strain/anger may distort the individual’s attitudes, expand the “regulative rules” associated with aggressive behavior, and increase the perceived legitimacy of a violent response. In this study, the author conducts an empirical examination of this argument using data from a national survey of male adolescents. The findings help to shed light on the affective and cognitive foundations of angry aggression; they not only confirm the key role assigned to angry arousal but also indicate that such arousal leads individuals to devalue nonaggressive responses to various provocations. Implications for criminological theory are discussed.

In 1997, Agnew stated that “new strain theories . . . should be part of any developmental theory of crime” and that “these theories point to new sources of stability and change in crime over the life course, and better help organize existing arguments in this area”; however, strain theory explanations of individual patterns of offending over the life span have garnered little attention, especially with regard to stability. This article addresses this void by assessing general strain theory (GST) explanations of persistent offending. Specifically, the author outlines the stability promoting mechanisms described by Agnew and assesses their empirical basis. Then, drawing on the sociology of stress, the author extends Agnew’s work and describes two additional ways that GST can explain persistence: past exposure to stressors and stress proliferation. These extensions move away from a reliance on trait-based explanations and instead view continuity as rooted in individual histories, dynamic processes, and social structure.

In their strain theory explanation for the gender gap in delinquency, Broidy and Agnew posit that the joint experience of anger and depression, which is more typical among females than males, should help explain gender differences in delinquency. The authors extend and test their claim using data from a southeastern middle school. Their findings show that females are more likely than males to experience anger and depression concomitantly and that the interaction between anger and depression is important for understanding the gender gap in delinquency. This is not because depression alleviates the impact of anger on delinquency among females, as suggested by gendered strain theory. Instead, depression exacerbates the effect of anger on delinquency among males. This article concludes that the key to understanding links between gender, emotions, and delinquency resides in gendered expressions of emotional responses to stress rather than in gendered experiences of emotions.