Illegitimate Means
Definition
The skills, contacts, and criminal infrastructure, such as an established fencing network or an organised numbers racket, needed to succeed at crime, as distinct from simply wanting to commit it.
Related terms
- Conflict Subculture
- A delinquent subculture that forms where neither legitimate nor stable illegitimate opportunity exists, producing gang violence as a substitute route to status...
- Criminal Subculture
- A delinquent subculture that forms where a stable illegitimate opportunity structure exists, channelling youth into organised, income-generating crime such as theft rings...
- Differential Opportunity Structure
- The idea that access to illegitimate means of achieving success, like access to legitimate means, varies systematically by neighbourhood and social position...
- Double Failure
- Cloward and Ohlin's term for someone who fails to reach success goals through both the legitimate opportunity structure and the illegitimate one,...
- Retreatist Subculture
- A delinquent subculture built around drug use and withdrawal, made up of double failures who cannot succeed through legitimate means or gain...