Psychological - Differential Association

• This theory proposes that individuals learn the values, attitudes, techniques and motives for criminal behaviour through association and interaction with different people
• Scientific Basis

  Edwin Sutherland (1924) developed a set of scientific principles that could explain all types of offending

  • 'The conditions which are said to cause crime should be present when crime is present, and they should be absent when crime is absent'

  His theory is designed to discriminate between individuals who become criminals and those who do not, whatever their class or ethnic background
• Crime as a learned behaviour

  Offending behaviour may be acquired in the same as any other behaviour through the process of learning

  Frequency, length and personal meaning of social associations change the degree of influence

  Crime can be learnt through reinforcement and modelling - if a child perceives praise or punishment, deviant behaviour can continue, and if role models are successful in crime it can result in vicarious reinforcement
• Crime as a learned behaviour

  This learning occurs often through interactions with significant others that the child associates with, such as the family and peer group

  Criminality arises from two factors

  • Learned attitudes towards crime (Pro or Anti criminal attitudes)
  • The learning of specific criminal acts
• Sutherland theorised 9 principles of offending
• P1) Criminal behaviour is learned - not inherited, also the person who is not already trained in crime does not invent criminal behaviour
• P2) Criminal behaviour is learned in interaction with other people in a process of communication - including verbal and gesture
• P3) The principle part of the learning of criminal behaviour occurs within intimate personal groups
• P4) When criminal behaviour is learned, the learning includes:

  • Techniques of committing the crime, which are sometimes very simple
  • The specific direction of the motives, drives, rationalisation, and attitudes
• P5).The specific direction of the motives and drives is learned from the definition of the legal codes and are favourable or unfavourable
• P6) A person becomes delinquent because of an excess of definitions favourable to violation of law over definitions unfavourable to violation of law

  • When people become criminals, they do so because of contact with criminal patterns but also isolation from criminal patterns
• P7) 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 criminal or anti criminal pattern with emotional reactions related to the association
• P8) The process of learning criminal behaviour by association with criminal and ant-criminal patterns involve all the mechanisms that are involved in any other learning
• P9) 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
• Pro-Criminal attitudes

  When a person is socialised into a group they will be exposed to values and attitudes towards the law

  Some of the values will be pro-crime, some of these will be anti-crime

  Sutherland argues that if the number of pro-criminal attitudes the person comes to acquire outweighs the number of anti-criminal attitudes, they are more likely to offend

  the learning process is the same whether a person is learning criminality or conformity to the law
• Pro-Criminal attitudes

  Differential association suggests that it should be possible to mathematically predict how likely it is that an individual will commit crime if we have knowledge of the frequency, intensity and duration of which they have been exposed to deviant and non-deviant norms and values
• Learning criminal acts

  In addition to being exposed to pro-criminal attitudes, the offender may also learn particular techniques for committing crime

  These might include how to break into someone's house through a locked window or hoe to disable a car stereo before stealing it
• Learning criminal acts

  As well as offering an account of how crime may 'breed' amongst specific social groups and in communities, Sutherland's theory can also account for why so many convicts released from prison go on to reoffend

  It is reasonable to assume that while inside prison inmates will learn specific techniques of offending from other, more experienced criminals that they may be eager to put into proactive upon their release

  This learning may occur through observational learning and imitation or direct tuition from criminal peers