psychological explanations: differential association Flashcards
what is differential association theory?
an explanation for offending which proposes that, through interaction with others, individuals learn the values, attitudes, techniques and motives for offending behaviour
scientific bases - sutherland (1924)
- he wanted to develop 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, regardless of their social class or ethnic background
how might offending be learned as a behaviour?
through interactions with significant others who the child values and spends most time with, such as the family and peer group
how can you use differential association to mathematically predict how likely it is that an individual will commit offences?
we need to know the frequency, intensity and duration of exposure to deviant and non-deviant norms and values
what 2 factors cause offending behaviour?
- learned attitudes towards offendings
- learning of specific acts / techniques
how do learned attitudes cause offending behaviour?
- when a person is socialised into a group, they will be exposed to values and attitudes towards the law
- these values will either be pro-crime or anti-crime
- sutherland argues that if the number of pro-criminal attitudes the person acquires outweights the number of anti-criminal attitudes, they will go on to offend
- learning process of the same whether a person is learning offending or conformity to the law
how do learned technqiues cause offending behaviour?
- offender may learn particular techniques for committing offences
- eg. how to break into someone’s house through a locked window
socialisation in prison
- sutherland’s theory accounts for why so many convicts released from prison go on to reoffend
- it is reasonable to assume that whilst in prison, inmate will learn specific techniques of offending from other, more experienced offenders that they may put into practice upon their release
- this learning may occur through observational learning and imiation or direct tuitition from offending peers
cambridge study in delinquent development (farrington et al. 2006) - sample
- prospective longitudinal survery of the developmet of offending and antisocial behaviour in 411 boys
- study began when the boys were aged 8 in 1961 and all living in a deprived, inner-city area of south london
farrington et al. (2006) - findings
- of the boys / men sampled, 41% were convicted of at least one offence between age 10 and 50
- average conviction career lasted from age 19 to 28 and included five convictions
- 7% were defined as ‘chronic offenders’ as they accounted for about half of all officially recorded offences in this study
what did farrington et al. (2006) find were the most important childhood risk factors at age 8-10 for later offending?
- family criminality
- daring or risk-taking
- low school attainment
- poverty
- poor parenting
evaluation: shifted focus of offending explanations
- moved emphasis away from early biological accounts of offending, such as lombroso’s atavistic theory, as well as theories that explained offending behaviour as being the product of individual weakness or immorality
- DA theory draws attention to the fact that deviant social circumstances and environments may be more to blame for offending that deviant people
- this approach is more desirable as it offers a more realistic solution to the problem of offending instead of eugenics (biological) or punishment (morality)
evaluation: risk of stereotyping
- individuals who come from impoverished, crime-ridden backgrounds may be stereotyped as ‘unavoidably offenders’
- sutherland did take great care to point out that offending should be considered on a individual case-by-case basis
-however, the theory tends to assume that exposure to pro-crime values is sufficient ot produce offending in those who are not exposed to it - this ignores the fact people may choose not to offend despite such influences, as not everyone who is exposed to pro-crime attitudes go on to offend
evaluation: theory can account for offending within all sectors of society
- sutherland recognised that some types of offence, such as burglary, may be clustered within inner-city, working-class communities
- other offences are clustered amongst more affluent groups
- sutherland was particuarly interested in ‘white-collar’ or corporate offences, which is a feature of middle-class social groups who share deviant norms and values
- therefore, not just ‘lower’ classes commit offences and the principles of DA can be used to explain all offences
evaluation: difficult to test the predictions of DA
- sutherland aimed to provide a scientific, mathematical framework where future offending behaviour can be predicted so predictions must be testable
- however, many of the concepts are not testable as they cannot be operationalised
- eg. it is difficult to measure the number of pro-crime attitudes a person has, or has been exposed to
- theory is also built on assumption that offending behaviour will occur when pro-crime values outnumber anti-crime ones, but if we cannot measure these, we cannot know at what point the urge to offend is realised and the offending career is triggered
- theory does not have scientific credibility
