Saints and Roughnecks was the title given to Chambliss' 1973 study in which he found that class and not crime often determines a person's reputation in the society and his fate with the police. The author, William Chambliss' selected two different groups of teenagers for his study, one coming from affluent part of the metropolitan area and are labeled Saints for the study, while the other group came from lower-income section of the society and were thus termed 'Roughnecks'. The study sought to find out just why the lower-income group was more often clashing with the police and ending up in jail for petty crimes, while the other group usually escaped police even though they were just about as delinquent as roughnecks. "In terms of the sheer number of illegal acts, the high-SES [socioeconomic status] boys were more delinquent. However, they were perceived as "sowing their wild oats" and were...
[ View Full Essay]