Deliquency and Opportunity Author:Richard A. Cloward & Lloyd E. Ohlin Delinquency and Opportunity follows he intellectual tradition of Emile Durkheim and Robert K. Melton, linking their theories of deviant behavior with those developed by Clifford R. Shaw, Henry D. McKay, and Edwin H. Sutherland. The result is a new explanation of delinquency which the authors call the theory of differential opportunity systems.