differential association theory

• differential association theory meaning

  proposes that individuals learn the values, attitudes and techniques for offending behaviour through association and interaction with different people
• what two factors does offending arise from?

  learned attitudes towards offending

  learning of specific offending acts/techniques
• learning attitudes

  sutherland - argues that if the number of pro-criminal attitudes the person comes to acquire outweighs the number of anti-criminal attitudes they will go on to offend
• learning techniques

  in addition to being exposed to pro-criminal attitudes the offender may learn how to break into someone's house through the window, for example
• socialisation in prison

  prison inmates will learn techniques of offending from one another which may be why so many go on and reoffend

  this learning may occur through observational learning and imitation or direct tuition
• strength of the differential association theory

  it changed the focus of offending explanations

  moving the emphasis away from biological explanations to the cause being the environment and social circumstances
• why is the shift away from biological explanations a strength ?

  this approach is more desirable because it offers a more realistic solution to the problem of offending instead of the biological or morality solutions
• limitation of the differential association theory

  it is difficult to test the predictions of differential association

  many of the concepts aren't testable because they can't be operationalised

  this means that the theory doesn't have scientific creditability