Crime and The American Dream Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Crime and The American Dream - Essay Example 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