A03 Differential Association Theory

• Explanatory power


  Theory is able to account from crime within all sectors of society. Sutherland recognised that some types of crime, burgarly, is associated with working class communities while other crimes are more prevalent amongst other groups.
• White-collar crime (Explanatory power)


  Sutherland was interested in 'White-collar crime' (corporate crime) and how this is a feature of the middle class groups who share deviant values.
• Shift of focus


  Successful shift from moving away from biological accounts of crime like atavistic theory and from explaining offending as immorality.
• Fosus on dysfuntional social circumstances (Shift of focus)


  Theory draws attention to dysfunctional social circumstances and environments which may be more to blame for criminality. Approach is more desirable as it offers a more realistic explanation to problems of crime instead of eugenics.
• Difficulty of testing


  Theory suffers from being difficult to test. Hard to see number of pro-criminal attitudes a person has, or been exposed to.
• Causality (Difficulty of testing)


  Theory built on assumption pro-criminal attitudes outnumber anti-criminal ones yet it does not provide satisfactory soultion to these issues of causality. This undermines its scientific credibility.
• Alternative explanations


  Response of family is crucial in determining whether individual is going to become an offender. If family supports criminal activity, this becomes major influence for child's value system. Important if criminal behaviour runs through families.
• Farrington and Mednick (Difficulty of testing)


  Farrington et al explored intergenerational crime, a key feature. Mednick et al found boys who had criminal adoptive parents and non-criminal biological parets were more likely to offend than thsoe whose bio parents and adoptive were non-crminal.
• Individual differences


  Danger in Sutherland's theory for stereotyping individuals coming from impoverished areas as 'unavoidably criminal'. Ignores the fact that people may choose to not offender despite pro-criminal influences. (Free will)