AO3 Differential Association Explanation

• +Shift of focus. Sutherland moved emphasis away from early biological explanations and from theories of offending as the product of individual weakness or immorality. Differential association theory draws attention to deviant social circumstances and environments as being more to blame for offending than deviant people. This approach offers a more realistic solution to offending instead of eugenics (the biological solution) or punishment (the morality solution).
• -Stereotyping. The theory risks stereotyping people from impoverished, crime-ridden backgrounds. This ignores that people may choose not to offend despite such influence as not everyone who is exposed to pro-crime attitudes goes on to offend.
• +Theory has wide reach. Whilst some crimes are clustered in inner-city working-class communities, other crimes are clustered in more affluent groups. Sutherland was particularly interested in so-called 'white-collar' or corporate offences and how this may be a feature of middle-class groups who share deviant norms. This shows that it is not just the lower' classes who commit offences and that differential association can be used to explain all offences.
• -Difficult to test predictions. Sutherland promised a scientific and mathematical framework for predicting offending behaviour, but the concepts can't be operationalised. It is unclear how we can measure the numbers of pro- or anti-crime attitudes a person is exposed to - so how can we know at what point offending would be triggered? This means the theory does not have scientific credibility.
• Nature or Nurture

  If the family supports offending activity, making it seem legitimate and reasonable, then this becomes a major influence on the child's value system. However, the fact that offending behaviour often seems to 'run in families' could also be interpreted as supporting biological explanations, such as genetics. The solution may be that some offences (e.g. drug offences) are related to nurture whereas others (e.g violent offences) are more due to 'nature.