differential association theory

• Differential association theory proposes that individuals learn the values, attitudes, techniques and motives for offending behaviour through association and interaction with different people.
• Sutherland set himself the task of developing a set of scientific principles that could explain all types of offending. His theory is designed to discriminate between individuals who become offenders and those who do not, whatever their social or ethnic background.
• Offending behaviour may be acquired in the same way as any other behaviour through the process of learning. This learning occurs most often through interactions with significant others who the child values most and spends most time with.
• Differential association suggests that it should be possible to mathematically predict how likely it is that an individual will commit offences.
• Offending arises from two factors: learned attitudes towards offending and the learning of specific offending acts/techniques.
• Learning attitudes:

  When a person is socialised into a group they will be exposed to values and attitudes towards the law. Some of these will be pro-crime, some will be anti-crime.
• Sutherland argues if the number of pro-criminal attitudes that the person comes to acquire outweighs the number of anti-criminal attitudes, they will go on to offend. The learning process is the same whether a person is learning offending or conformity to the law.
• Learning techniques:

  In addition to being exposed to pro-crime attitudes, the would-be offender may also learn particular techniques for committing offences (e.g. how to break into someone’s house through a locked window).
• Sutherland’s theory can also account for why so many convicts released from prison go on to reoffend.
• It is reasonable to assume that whilst inside prison inmates will learn specific techniques of offending from other, more experienced offenders that they may put into practice upon their release. This learning may occur through observational learning and imitation or direct tuition from offending peers.
• One strength of differential association theory is it changes the focus of offending explanations. Sutherland was successful in moving the emphasis away from early biological accounts of offending (such as Lombroso’s atavistic theory) as well as away from theories that explained offending as being the product of individual weakness or immorality.
• Differential association theory draws attention to the fact that deviant social circumstances and environments may be more to blame for offending than deviant people. This approach is more desirable because it offers a more realistic solution to the problem of offending instead of eugenics(biological solution) or punishment(morality solution).
• Differential association runs the risk of stereotyping individuals who come from impoverished, crime-ridden backgrounds as ‘unavoidably offenders’- even though Sutherland took great care to point out that offending should be considered on an individual case-by-case basis.
• However, the theory tends to suggest that exposure to pro-crime values is sufficient to produce offending in those who are exposed to it. This ignores the fact that people may choose not to offend despite such influences, as not everyone who is exposed to pro-crime attitudes goes on to offend.
• The theory can account for offending within all sectors of society. Whilst Sutherland recognised that some types of offence, such as burglary, may be clustered within certain inner-city, working-class communities , it is also the case that some offences are clustered amongst more affluent groups in society.
• Sutherland was particularly interested in so-called ‘white-collar’ or corporate offences and how this may be a feature of middle-class social groups who share deviant norms and values. This shows it is not just the ‘lower’ classes who commit offences and that the principles of differential association can be used to explain all offences.
• One limitation is it is difficult to test the predictions of differential association. Sutherland aimed to provide a scientific, mathematical framework within which future offending behaviour could be predicted and this means that the predictions must be testable.
• The problem is that many of the concepts are not testable because they cannot be operationalised. For example, it is hard to see how the number of pro-crime attitudes a person has, or has been exposed to, could be measured. Similarly, the theory is built on the assumption that offending behaviour will occur when pro-crime values outnumber anti-crime ones.Without being able to measure these, we cannot know at what point the urge to offend is realised and the offending career is triggered. This means the theory does not have scientific credibility.