Exploring Criminological Theories in "Boys in The Hood"

Boys in the Hood: Deviance Theories

In the movie Boys in the Hood it showed many different characteristics on theories of deviance. The theories were, strain theory; control theory; differential association theory; labeling theory and conflict theory. In this movie all the theories were evidently shown with the acting of all the characters Dough boy, Ricky, their mother and Tray. This movie in a nutshell is the experiments and troubles of three young African-American males growing up in South Central Los Angeles.

At the start of the movie the first theory I noted was strain theory. Strain theory in this movie was the gap between Dough boy making money and accomplishing his goals in life. It was extremely hard for Dough boy to achieve his goals because different from his other brother Ricky, he had no support to him out with anything. Ricky had the best of the best; he had tremendous support with superior grades to reach all the goals he sought to achieve.

I observed that control theory was the next big theory in this movie. Tray, Dough boy and Ricky all took this theory into consideration because they were all little black boys. Tray does have well-rounded parents that went far in life; his parents push him to follow in their footsteps so people don’t think that he is just an uneducated black boy that isn’t elegant and didn’t succeed. Ricky and his mother had a close bond that was apparent in the movie. He knew that and could get a little further than Dough boy and possibly not have this control theory control him and aspects of his life.

The third theory in this theory full movie was differential association theory. They boys were exposed to deviant acts; when they walked down the street they sae dead bodies, unexpected frights breaking out in dead center of city streets, crazy drug mothers letting their baby run down the street unsupervised with only tiny diaper on. Trays parents made sure he was brought up to the best of their ability. They strongly encouraged him to do his best and nothing but his best like good parents should do. He worked hard in school and work hard to keep his job and make funds for himself. Like good parents should do, they made him work for everything and didn’t just hand it to him. Then there was Ricky, the all-star football player, who one day could make it to the big leagues.

Labeling theory is how the self-identity and behavior of individuals may be determined or influenced by the terms used to describe or classify them. This unfortunately happened allot in this movie due to the amount of black people. The black boys from the hood where getting pulled over for minding their own business but the cops pulled then over because they were obviously up to no good because black people where labeled as always being involved with drugs, weapons and other illegal things.

The last theory that came upon me was conflict theory. This is when you are treated differently. This conflict theory can be shown at the beginning of the movie the dad called the cops and it took the cops a whole hour to show up at the scene.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed this movie and taught me lots. I was introduced to deviance theories that I had never heard of before and how the whole African-American community got treated and labeled back in the age of the movie. It was a very informing movie, and I suggest you to keep showing this film it to future sociology classes.