Differential association theory

• Sutherland (1939): individuals learn the values, attitudes, techniques a motives for criminal behaviour through association and interaction with different people. This is called differential association.
• Criminal behaviour is learned from those people around them. If a person is surrounded by more pro-crime than anti-crime attitudes, this theory predicts that they will go onto commit crime.
• Criminals attitudes and behaviours are learned in the same way as other attitudes and behaviours:

  Learned through interactions with others that they associate with parents, peers, family- agents of socialisation e.g mafia families.
• • leaning of attitudes

  Pro criminal attitudes; if the number of pro-criminal attitudes outweigh the anti criminal attitudes, they will go onto offend- same for any behaviour. 

  We should predict if an individual will offend based on frequency, intensity and duration of the pro-crime attitudes and behaviours they have been exposed to. 
•  learning of criminal acts:

  Learn techniques about how to commit crime. E.g how to break into a house, how to start a car without a key, how to shoplift. 

  University of crime- crime can ‘breed’ amongst different communities e.g am offender goes into prison for the first time and mixes with lots of more experienced offenders and learns new techniques and methods for committing crime.
• Socialisation in prison:

  Sutherlands theory can account for why so many convicts released from prison go on to reoffend. It is reasonable to assume that whilst in prison, inmates learn specific techniques from others, 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
• Skills needed for crime:

  Lock picking

  Lying/ deception

  Inconspicuous 

  Planning/organisation 

  Technical expertise 

  Insight to the police. 
• A strength of differential association theory is that it can explain a wide range of crimes. For example, it can explain crimes across all sectors of society. Sutherland recognised that some crimes e.g burglary may be linked to certain communities e.g working class, inner city areas. It’s also the case that some crimes are more prevalent amongst more affluent groups in society. He created the term, white collar crimes as crimes that occur amongst the idle classes e.g fraud. This suggests the theory has excellent explanatory power. 
• A strength of differential association theory is there was a shift in focus from the outdated atavistic explanation of crime. He drew attention to the fact that crime can occur due to a person’s circumstances and environments, rather than them having something genetically or otherwise wrong with them.This suggests the theory is more realistic explanation of crime in terms of how we treat criminals as it allowed us to attempt to mange peoples circumstances, rather than the biological option of eugenics.
• A weakness of differential association theory is that it fails to explain why some people in difficult circumstances do not commit crime. For example, there is a danger that this theory leads to stereotyping of individuals who come from impoverished ‘crime ridden’ families. It suggests that if a person is exposed to such environments, they will turn to crime. This suggests that this approach takes an environmentally deterministic approach as it fails to recognise people’s free will in choosing to not commit crime.
• A weakness of differential association theory is that it is difficult to test this theory. He proposed a scientific, mathematical framework to test crime. However, it’s very difficult to measure how many pro-crime attitudes a person has been exposed to, or measure their attitudes towards crime. Without being able to measure them, it is impossible to know at which point the criminal career will begin.This suggests that the theory is limited and lacks scientific credibility due to lack of objective and empirical testing.