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• Differential Association Theory


  Individuals base their behaviors by association and interaction with others
• Differential Association Theory


  • Proposes that through interaction with others, individuals learn the values, attitudes, techniques, and motives for criminal behavior
• Social Cognitive Theory


  Behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed
• Kinds of learning in Social Cognitive Theory

  • Observational learning
  • Vicarious learning
• Modeling instigators


  • Live model
  • Verbal modelling
  • Symbolic modelling
• Control Theories


  Focus on how proper socialization keeps people in line and how misbehavior can be controlled
• Personality-Oriented Control Theory


  The ability of social groups or institutions to makes norms or rules effective
• Personality-Oriented Control Theory


  • Assumes that one's primary groups, such as immediate family and friends, have the biggest impact on that person's behavior
  • If this primary groups failed or if their control over a person is weakened, there will be a breakdown of established controls
• Types of control in Family-Focused Theory


  • Direct control
  • Indirect control
  • Internalized control
• Containment Theory


  Criminal behavior occurs when a person experiences various external pushes or internal pulls to commit crime and when one's external and internal containment is weak
• Elements of Containment Theory

  • Internal pull
  • External pushes
  • Inner containment
  • Outer containment
• Neutralization Theory


  Explains how criminal offenders engage in rule-breaking activity while negating their culpability, or blame
• Ways offenders neutralize blame


  • Denial of responsibility
  • Denial of injury
  • Denial of victim
  • Condemnation of the condemners
  • Appeal to higher loyalties
• Social Bonding Theory


  The view that everyone has the potential to become a criminal, but most people are control by their bonds to society
• Low Self-Control Theory


  • Children develop levels of self-control by about ages seven or eight, and these levels remain relatively stable the rest of their lives
  • Children with low levels of self-control end up being more prone to crime, and their criminal propensity continues into later life
• Labeling Theories


  People come to identify and behave in ways that reflect how others label them
• Types of deviance in Labeling Theory


  • Primary deviance
  • Secondary deviance
• Master Status and Deviance Theory


  • Focuses on deviant behavior in which it is a process of being caught and branded as a deviant or a criminal
  • Master status is a person's defining trait or characteristics
  • Auxiliary status refers to traits that are expected to accompany master status
• Social Process Theories


  • Differential Association Theory
  • Social Learning Theory
  • Control Theories
  • Labeling Theories
  • Master Status and Deviance Theory
• Theory


  A set of logically interconnected propositions explaining how phenomena are related and from which a number of hypotheses can be derived and tested
• Theory


  The explanation of something or a phenomenon
• RONALD AKERS AND CHRISTINE SELLERS SIX (6) CRITERIA FOR EVALUATING A THEORY

  • Logical consistency
  • Scope
  • Parsimony
  • Testability
  • Fit with empirical evidence
  • Usefulness of policy implications
• Micro level theories


  Focus on a small group of offenders or on an individual crime, attempt to answer why some individuals are more likely than others to commit crime
• Macro level theories


  Explain the "big picture" of crime—crime across the world or across a society, attempt to answer why there are variations in group rates of crime
• The Age of Enlightenment


  An 18th-century cultural movement that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge
• Psychological determinism


  One of the positivist school of thought determinism which explains the psychological reason of criminality, the behavior is the result of psychological abnormalities
• Psychological Process theories


  Assume that whatever individual traits a person may possess, these traits are shaped through environmental influences
• The Law of Imitation Theory


  Criticizes Lombroso's work and has its own interpretation of criminality, there are three Laws of Imitation
• Intergenerational Transmission Theory


  States that criminal tends to have antisocial parents and the family violence serves as a social learning to children who will later on, when they grow up, learn this violence or antisocial behavior that results to crime
• Sociological Determinism/Positivism


  Theories which focuses on sociological factors in the causation of crimes, such as societal role in criminality (family, peers, school and social norms), culture and subculture, criminal association and behaviorism
• Social Learning Theory/ Differential Social Reinforcement Theory


  A technique that is used to increase desirable behaviors and reduce undesirable behaviors, there are two main characteristics - reinforcing the desirable behavior and withholding reinforcement of the undesirable behavior
• Anomie Theory


  The non-existence of norms in a society encourages person to commit unlawful and other anti social acts
• Social Disorganization Theory


  A theory of crime and criminal activity that link crime rates with neighborhood characteristics, demonstrated that delinquency did not randomly occur throughout the city but was concentrated in disadvantaged neighborhoods
• Concentric Zone Theory


  A variation that argues that crime increases toward the inner city area
• Community Control Theory


  Believes that there are several additional levels of community social control - private control, parochial control, and public control
• Collective Efficacy Theory


  Collective efficacy is defined as the process of activating or converting social ties among neighborhood residents in order to achieve collective goals, such as public order or the control of crime
• Social Strain Theory


  Refers to the discrepancies between culturally defined goals and the institutionalized means available to achieve these goals, social inequality can create situations in which people experience tension (or strain) between the goals society says they should be working toward and the legitimate means they have available to meet those goals
• Strain Typology


  • Conformity
  • Innovation
  • Ritualism
  • Retreatism
  • Rebellion
• Subcultural Theory/ Subcultural Strain Theory


  Assumes that crime is a consequence of the union of young people into so-called subcultures in which deviant values and moral concepts dominate
• Differential Opportunity Theory


  Determined that there were three paths individuals faced with limited opportunities would use to achieve success