Crime as culture revisited: Being young, poor and delinquent in Lisbon, Portugal

Abstract

In Portugal, a large number of young residents living on the urban periphery have adopted a lifestyle in constant conflict with the law. This article discusses their stories and their willingness to endure violent encounters with the police and draconian prison sentences, drawing on a cultural criminological framework of the phenomenology of delinquency. It is argued that the youths’ behaviour is driven less by monetary considerations or the thrill of transgression than by a deep yearning to make amends for past humiliations and to compensate for their mistreatment at the hands of state actors. Seeking to gain respect and avoid the role of perpetual victims, their marginal social beingness is deliberately forlorn, as they realize that the proceeds of crime will never buy them the true citizenship to which they aspire. Clinging to a culture of deviance that only exacerbates their original state of marginality, they submit to the life of social outlaws, provoking increasingly harsh responses from law enforcement and the criminal justice system.