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Summary KRM 310 - Section A - Unit 8
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Unit 8- Social Process Perspectives1. Sutherland’s differential association theory: (10)
Symbolic interactionism: focus is on how individuals construct social reality through communication
with one another.
Culture conflict: crime is an outcome of a clash between cultures.
Sutherland’s 9 propositions:
1. Criminal behavior is learned.
2. Criminal behavior is learned in interaction with other persons in a process of communication.
3. The principal part of the learning of criminal behavior occurs within intimate personal groups.
4. When criminal behavior is learned, the learning includes:
(a) Techniques of committing the crime, which are sometimes very complicated and sometimes
very simple;
(b) The specific direction of motives, drives, rationalizations and attitudes.
5. The specific direction of motives and drives is learned from definitions of legal codes as favorable
and unfavorable.
6. A person becomes delinquent because of an excess of definitions favorable to violation of law over
definitions unfavorable to violation of law.
7. Differential association may vary in frequency, duration, priority and intensity.
8. The process of learning criminal behavior by association with criminal and anti-criminal patterns
incorporates all the mechanisms that are involved in any other learning.
9. Although criminal behavior is an expression of general needs and values, it is not explained by those
general needs and values since non-criminal behavior is an expression of the same needs and
values.
2. Evaluation of Sutherland’s differential association theory: (5)
A first criticism concerns causal order: with delinquency, which comes first, associating with
delinquent peers or one’s own delinquency?
It is possible that someone’s delinquency produces friendships with delinquent peers rather than
the reverse.
People become delinquent for reasons other than differential association, but once they do, they find
themselves spending more time with other delinquents, the reverse of what Sutherland assumes.
A second criticism is that Sutherland was influenced too much by friend’s definitions or attitudes,
favorable to violating the law while neglecting other influences of the friends’ behavior.
We might do what our friends do, not because we have adopted their attitudes, but simply because
we want them to like us or because we find their behavior rewarding.
A third criticism concerns Sutherland’s implication that crime is committed in groups, or if done
alone, is still influenced by “intimate personal groups”.
DA theory applies well to many crimes and especially juvenile offenses such as shoplifting and
vandalism in which peer influences loom large.
But any criminal behaviors do not fit this pattern: they are committed by lone individuals and also
do not stem from attitudes and techniques learned from friends eg murder.
A fourth criticism is that there are difficulties in testing DA theory: empirical tests of the theory
usually examine the effects of the number of delinquent peers.
But this focus differs from Sutherland’s emphasis on the number of definitions of favorable and
unfavorable to violating the law.
This concept is much more difficult to measure than the number of delinquent peers.
A fifth criticism is that Sutherland’s focus was on male delinquency and did not consider whether
DA works the same for females. Some studies suggest that it may not:
Although girls often have more intimate relationships than boys do, their friends tend to be less
delinquent than boys’ friends are.
In other words, peer relationships may be a stronger determinant of male delinquency than of
female delinquency.
3. Burgess and Akers differential reinforcement theory: (10)
Differential reinforcement theory is a revision of Sutherland’s work that utilizes the central concepts
and principles of modern behaviorism.
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