ABSTRACT
Premiering in 1957 on Broadway, the musical West Side Story introduced the world to a group of self-aware juvenile delinquents. These youngsters ironically echoed a variety of messages they have heard from the adult world around them—not least the burgeoning field of criminology (e.g., Cohen 1955)—in an exculpatory plea to a certain Officer Krupke, explaining that they were naturally delinquent due to their drug-addicted mothers and alcoholic fathers. With the teenage “rebel without a cause” very much in the late 1950s’ air, Gresham Sykes and David Matza (1957: 667) also famously explored young people’s tendency to attribute their delinquency “to forces outside of the individual and beyond his control such as unloving parents, bad companions, or a slum neighborhood.” Despite a few catchy tunes, West Side Story today can feel dated and clichéd. Sykes and Matza’s writing, however, still reads as insightful and fresh 60 years after its publication, and the idea of neutralizing one’s criminal or deviant actions is more prominent than ever in academic criminology.
