Psychological explantions: differential association theory

What is the differential association theory

Proposes that individuals learn the values, attitudes, technique and motives for offending bvr through association and interaction with different people

Scientific basis

Sutherland 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 was and is designed to discriminate between individuals who become offenders and those who do not, whatever their social class or ethnic background.

Offending as a learned behaviour

Offending arises in two ways:

• learning attitudes - when a person is socialised into a group they will be exposed to values and attitudes towards the law. Some of these values will be pro crime some 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 will go on to offend

• Learning techniques - the offender may also learn particular techniques for committing offences. These might include how to break into someone’s house through a locked window or how to disable a car stereo before stealing it.

Socialisation in prison

Sutherland

It is reasonable to assume that whilst inside prison inmates will learn specific techniques of offending from other more experienced offenders that they may put into practise upon their release. This learning may occur through observational learning and imitation or direct tuition from offending peers

Level 1 of moral reasoning

Pre morality

Stage one - punishment and obedience orientation: doing what is right because of the fear of punishment

Stage two - hedonistic orientation; doing what is right for personal gain perhaps a reward

Level 2 moral reasoning

Conventional morality

Stage three - impersonal concordance orientation; doing what is right according to the majority to be a good boy/girl

Stage four - law and order orientation; doing what is right because it is your duty and helps society

Level 3 moral reasoning

Post conventional morality

Stage five - social contrast or legalistic orientation: doing what is right even if against the law because the law is too restrictive

Stage six - universal ethical principles orientation

Shift of focus

P. One strength of differential association theory is, at the time it was the first published, it has changed the focus of offending explanations

E. Sutherland was successful in moving the emphasis away from early biological accounts of offending such as lombroso atavistic theory as well as theories that explained offending as being the product of individual weakness or immorality

E. Differential association theory draws attention to the fact that deviant social circumstances and environments may be more to blame fro offending than deviant people

L. This approach is more desirable because it offers a more realistic solution to the problem of offending rather than eugenics

H. Hard to justify prison in society as it may ‘breed’ reoffending

Wide reach

P. One strength is that the theory can account for offending within all sectors of society

E. Whilst Sutherland recognised that some types of offence such as burglary may be clustered within certain inner city, working class communities it is also the case that some offences are clustered amongst more affluent groups in society

E. Sutherland was interested in ‘ white collar crimes’ or corporate offences and how this may be a feature of middle class social groups who shared deviant norms and values

L. This shows that it is not just the ‘lower’ classes who commit offences

Difficultly testing

P. One limitation is it is difficult to test the predictions of differential association

E. Sutherland aimed to provide a scientific, mathematical framework within which future offending behaviour could be predicted and this means that the predictions must be testable

E. The problem is many of the concepts are not testable because they cannot be operationalised. For example - it is hard to see the number of pro crime attitudes a person has or has been exposed to could be measured

L. This means the theory does not have scientific credibility

H. It attempts to provide a scientific, mathematical framework to predict offending behaviour