forensics - psychological - differential association Flashcards
who put forward differential association?
edwin sutherlund
simply, what does the differential association theory argue causes criminal behaviour?
we learn values, attitudes, techniques and motives for crime through our interactions with different people and their views on pro/anti crime behaviour.
what did edwin set out to do?
develop a set of a scientific principles that explain offending.
wanted to distinguish between people who commit crime and those wo do not.
what ways do people learn crime?
learn attitudes towards crime
learn techniques of commiting crime - how to steal
who is criminality learned from and how?
criminality is learned from the significant charectors of a persons life such as family and peers. It is through interacting with them that a person learns crime.
how do people develop a pro-criminal world view?
when socialised into a group they will become exposed to values towards law and crime. procrime vs anticrime
more procrime = CRIMINAL
How does edwin think we can predict crime?
mathmatically through caculating the duration, intensity and frequency of exposure to pro-crime influence
what effect do prisons have on reoffending?
they are a chamber for expanding criminal behaviour because people are exposed to more pro-crime values
when they come out of prison they put these values to practice in the real world
prisons increase recidivism
what did Farrington find?
one of the biggest risk factors for crime is family
PA of edwin
working with troubled famalies programme that aims to identify children vulnerable to crime and help prevent it
evalaute differential association theory
+practical applications - troubled familys programme
-yet there is limmited predictive value and hard to measure - how do we know how much pro-crime a person has been exposed to. may mean its not atually that useful
- individual differences - not everyone who is exposed to crime becomes a criminal
- potentially the diathesis stress model is a more comprehensive explanation because it explains why some people are more likely to respond to a trigger because they have a biological predisposition to commit crime
how did ediwn shift focus?
change from biological accounts like atavistic form to environmental explanations which is more desirable and realistic solution to the function of crime instead of eugenics which suggest there is a perfect birth form
