Sociological theory of crime

Introduction to the Differential Association Theory?

• • Criminal behaviour is learnable and learned in interaction with

other deviant persons. Through this association, they learn not only
techniques of certain crimes, but also specific rationale, motives and
so on. • Differential association theory explains why any individual
forwards toward deviant behaviour. • His assertion is most useful
when explaining peer influences among deviant youths or special
mechanism of becoming certain criminal.
• A bit of a backstory • Edwin H. Sutherland was born August 13, 1883 in
Gibbon, Nebraska and died in 1950. He grew up and studied in Ottawa,
Kansas, and Grand Island, Nebraska. Much of his study was influenced by
Chicago school's approach to the study of crime that emphasized human
behaviour as determined by nurture, rather than nature. • After
completing graduate studies he was employed at the University of
Minnesota between 1926 and 1929 and solidified his reputation as one of
the country’s leading criminologists. Later he became the founder of the
Bloomington school of criminology at Indiana University. During that
time, he published 3 books, includingTwenty Thousand Homeless Men
(1936),The Professional Thief (1937), and the third edition of Principles of
Criminology (1939). • In 1939 he was elected president of the American
Sociological Society, and in 1940 was elected president of the Sociological
Research Association
• 1. Criminal behaviour is learned
• 2. Criminal behaviour is learned in interaction with other persons in
a process of communication.
• 3. The principal part of the learning of criminal behaviour occurs
within intimate personal groups. (Thus, this means the impersonal
communication, such as movies or newspaper play a relatively
unimportant part in committing criminal behaviour.)
• 4. When criminal behaviour is learned, the learning includes: a)
techniques of committing the crime, which are sometimes very
simple b) the specific direction of motives, drives, rationalizations,
and attitudes.
. • 5. The specific direction of the motives and drives is learned from
definitions of the legal codes as favourable or unfavourable
(positive/negative conditioning in the law) This different context of
situation usually is found in areas where culture conflicts to the legal
code.
• 6. A person becomes delinquent because of an excess of definitions favourable
to violation of law over definitions unfavourable to violation of law. (People
see more good things than bad things when viewing crime) When people
become criminal, they do so not only because of contacts with criminal
patterns but also because of isolation from anti-criminal patterns.
• • 7. Differential association may vary in frequency, duration, priority, and
intensity. Priority seems to be important principally through its selective
influence and intensity has to do with such things as the prestige of the source
of a criminal or anti-criminal pattern and with emotional reactions related to
the association. Although quantifying this would be very difficult.
• 8. The process of learning criminal behaviour by association with
criminal and anti-criminal patterns involves all of the mechanisms
that are involved in any other learning. i.e. positive conditioning in
the form of praise This means that the learning of criminal
behaviour is not restricted to the process of imitation.
• 9. While criminal behaviour is an expression of general needs and
values, it is not explained by those general needs and values since non-
criminal behaviour is an expression of the same needs and values.
Thieves generally steal in order to secure money, but likewise honest
labourers work in order to money. The attempts to explain criminal
behaviour by general drives and values such as the money motive have
been, and must completely to be, futile, since they explain lawful
behaviour as completely as they explain criminal behaviour. They are
similar to respiration, which is necessary for any behaviour, but which
does not differentiate criminal from noncriminal behaviour. (Sutherland,
1974: 75-76)
• In summary… • In summary, he believed that an individual’s
associations are determined in a general context of social
organization (for instance, family income as a factor of determining
residence of family and in many cases, delinquency rate is largely
related to the rental value of houses) and thus differential group
organization as an explanation of various crime rates is consistent
with the differential association theory. (Sutherland, 1974: 77)
 Criticisms
• • However, Donald R. Cressey pointed out that the concept of
"definitions" in the theory was not precisely defined, and the
statement did not give good guidance on how to operationalize •
The second real problem was that it left the learning process
unspecified. There is virtually no clue in Sutherland's theory as to
what in particular would be included in "all the mechanisms that
are involved in any of other learning • Another important criticism
argued that Sutherland's theory is a "cultural deviance" theory as a
way of showing that it made wrong presumptions about human
behaviour and the role of culture in deviant behaviour. (Matsueda
(1988))
 Anomie theory
• Durkheim (1964) also placed crime in the context of the division of
labor and the degradation of society. According to Durkheim,
simpler societies were unified by a ‘‘mechanical solidarity’’ where
work was monotonous, conformity was the norm, and a strong,
collective consciousness permeated society. These societies were
also marked by ‘‘integration’’: a state of cohesion, strong social
bonds, and the subordination of the self to a common cause
(Durkheim, 1951, p. 209)
• According to Durkheim (1964), in societies where the division of
labor and individual differences rise to prominence, social controls
weaken and lead to three abnormal forms of division of labor. Of
the three abnormal forms, the predominant abnormal condition is
‘‘anomic’’ where there is: (1) a lack of integration of different work
functions, (2) conflicts between labor and capital, and (3) increasing
specializations. This leads to a failure to produce fulfilling and
satisfying social relationships between members of society,
ultimately leading to a state of anomie (Durkheim, 1964) By
describing the breakdown of society based on the increasing
division of labor and erosion of moral order, Durkheim created, in
effect, the structuralfunctionalist perspective of crime
Slums and the Chicago School
• Surrounded by a growing city and exploding population of the
urban poor, the Chicago School believed that the causes of crime
were primarily entrenched in one area of American society— the
city slums—and people became criminal by learning deviant cultural
norms and values .Rejecting the social Darwinism of the time,
criminologists in the Chicago School rejected crime as a matter of
individual pathology; they viewed crime as a social problem in
which the poor were driven by their environment into a life of crime
due to criminal values’ replacing conventional ones and being
transmitted from one generation to the next
Anomie Revisited
• Merton (1968) rejected the view that crime emanated from city
slums and learned deviant cultural values. Instead, he noted that
conformity to conventional cultural values produced high rates of
crime and deviance. Merton agreed with Durkheim’s view that the
biological perspective provided inadequate explanations on
deviance and that when institutionalized norms weaken and
anomie takes hold in societies by placing an intense value on
economic success, it became clear that anomie was not created by
sudden social change .
• Social systems hold the same goals for all people without giving the
same people the equal means to achieve them. According to
Merton, when this occurs, standards of right and wrong are no
longer applicable, and it is necessary to determine ‘‘which of the
available procedures is most efficient in netting the culturally
approved value?’’
Cultural Transmission
• Shaw and McKay (researchers at Chicago’s Institute for Juvenile
Research) expanded on the work of Park and Burgess and argued
that the organization of a neighborhood in a city was central in the
prevention of delinquency
• Shaw and McKay (1972) confirmed that delinquency was highest in
the zone of transition and decreased within neighborhoods where
increasing affluence corresponded with the distance from the
central business district. Also, the highest rates of delinquency
persisted over extended periods of time and throughout the
changes in the ethnic demographics within the community. Shaw
and McKay drew the conclusion that the nature of the
neighborhood and the economic status and cultural values of
various neighborhood types were crucial in the regulation of crime;
ethnicity and the nature of the individual within the neighborhood
did not determine the likelihood of crime
 Strain Theory
• Strain theory is a sociology and criminology theorydeveloped in
1938 by Robert K. Merton. The theorystates that society puts
pressure on individuals to achieve socially accepted goals (such as
the American dream) though they lack the means, this leads
to strain which may lead the individuals to commit crimes.
In sociology and criminology, strain theorystates that social
structures within society may pressure citizens to commit crime.
 Strain theory

• Strain theory is a sociology and criminology theory developed in

1938 by Robert K. Merton.The theory states that society puts
pressure on individuals to achieve socially accepted goals (such as
the American dream) though they lack the means, this leads to
strain which may lead the individuals to commit crimes. Examples
being selling drugs or becoming involved in prostitution to gain
financial security.
Strain may either be:

• Structural: this refers to the processes at the societal level which

filter down and affect how the individual perceives his or her needs,
i.e. if particular social structures are inherently inadequate or there
is inadequate regulation, this may change the individual's
perceptions as to means and opportunities; or
• Individual: this refers to the frictions and pains experienced by an
individual as he or she looks for ways to satisfy his or her needs, i.e.
if the goals of a society become significant to an individual, actually
achieving them may become more important than the means
adopted.
• When faced with strain, people have five ways to adapt:[1]
• Conformity: pursuing cultural goals through socially approved means.
("Hopeful poor")
• Innovation: using socially unapproved or unconventional means to obtain
culturally approved goals. Example: dealing drugs or stealing to achieve
financial security. ("surviving poor")
• Ritualism: using the same socially approved means to achieve less elusive
goals (more modest and humble). ("passive poor")
• Retreatism: to reject both the cultural goals and the means to obtain it,
then find a way to escape it. ("retreating poor")
• Rebellion: to reject the cultural goals and means, then work to replace
them. ("resisting poor")
 Labeling theory

• Labeling theory is the theory of how the self-identity and behavior

of individuals may be determined or influenced by the terms used
to describe or classify them. It is associated with the concepts
of self-fulfilling prophecy and stereotyping. Labeling theory holds
that deviance is not inherent to an act, but instead focuses on the
tendency of majorities to negatively label minorities or those seen
as deviant from standard cultural norms. Effects of Labelling
Labelling Theorists claim that by labelling certain people as criminal
or deviant society encourages them to become more so