Why don't you commit crime? Or if you do, why do you?
Well what would the people you care about think if you were arrested, or maybe even
spent time in prison. Would they be shocked and disappointed, or would they think it's
kind of cool.
Edwin Sutherland thinks it's the opinion of those people that has the biggest influence
on if you would actually commit a crime.
Meaning do you belong to a culture that is pro- or anti criminal
Sutherland created the term differential association, and he completely rejected biological ideas
around offending, instead looking at the cultural pressures of people involved in criminal activity.
Criminality is “participation in a cultural tradition and as the result of association
with representatives of that culture”.
What this means is criminality, and non criminality is learnt from the people who surround us.
We know this as socialisation, we learn the norms and values of society from our community,
parents, friends, and hopefully even teachers.
But each one of us has a different set of people around who socialise us. This is the
differential association. Criminals are socialised too, but the people around them teach deviant
norms and values from the rest of society.
That’s because some of the people around them hold pro-criminal attitudes. The more
people around them with pro-criminal attitudes, and the more extreme those attitudes the more
likely the individual will commit crime.
We can use the idea of reinforcement here, the people around us provide social approval
and disapproval for our actions. Criminals will approve of the criminal behaviour of
others.
Part of differential association theory is not just picking up pro-criminal attitudes
but learning actual offending techniques, these are passed down the generations or across
peer groups. A father may teach his son how to pick a lock, or a businessman may teach
his friend how to cheat on their taxes.
Reinforcement also works beyond approval, criminals often receive material benefits
from committing crime and may see these rewards as better than potential rewards from not
offending in their community.
Evaluations
Most of what we have looked at in this unit explains violent crime, but Sutherland literally
wrote the book on what is known as white collar crime. This is non-violent crime that is committed
by high status, respectable business people and people who work in government.
One interesting aspect of differential association is it explains both violent and white collar
crime. In some peer groups bank robbery is acceptable. But for others bank robbery would
be wrong, but defrauding millions from a bank in a scam, or paying the government bribes
for billions in contracts is fine, because, well everyone else they know does it.
There are real practical applications to this theory, firstly don't put first time offenders
with experienced criminals in prison. I mean that would effectively be a criminal university,
with older criminals passing on pro-criminal attitudes and techniques.
Secondly go into communities with pro-criminal attitudes and try to change the narrative,
perhaps by trying to offer alternate rewarding opportunities that don't involve criminal
activity.
Sutherland’s work was a complete rejection of the idea of “born criminals”. In 1930’s
America genetic ideas about criminality were used to perform racially motivated forced
sterilisation. This was on criminals and members of racial groups so they couldn't pass on
what were considered to be criminal genes, a policy called eugenics. Remember Lombroso?
But it's not all positive evaluations, one major problem is in reality people are most
likely to cause criminal offences if they are male, and in late adolescence to early
adulthood. This makes no sense according to differential association theory, as older
males would have had more socialising experience, so exposure to pro-criminal attitudes. And
males and females are socialsied in the same household and exposed to the same attitudes,
but it’s the males who statistically go on to commit crime.
Finally any evidence in this area is going to be correlational. There is no easy way
to separate the genetic and social influences, and it may actually be that people who are
genetically likely to become criminals seek out other people with criminal attitudes to
socialise with this process is called niche picking.
Here is a real forensic exam question on differential association theory
I want to give a quick thank you to everyone who supports the channel over on patreon
A quick reminder. if you are a psych boost patron at the neuron level and above you can
access 6 forensic tutorial videos over on psych boost.com.
I will talk you through a model answer for the exam questions and give some general tips.
Synapse patrons can access a printable forensic poster, a 90 question quiz sheet covering
the unit and an essay table. for everyone else don't forget to subscribe
so you don't miss the videos released right up to your exams, and I will see you in the
next psych boost video, Psychodynamic explanations of offending behaviour.