SOCI 344 Sociology of Deviant Behaviour Session Ten

Differential Association

Lecturer: Prof. Chris Abotchie, Department of Sociology

Contact Information: cabotchie@yahoo.com

Session Overview

• One of the typically sociological theories of crime ‘causation’ is the Differential Association theory formulated by Edwin Sutherland. The theory is typically sociological because it involves interaction with other people.

• Remember we defined sociology as involving a scientific study of the web or tissue of human interactions and interrelations – their conditions and consequences. Thus any human activity that has to do with interactions and interrelations is said to be specifically sociological.

• According to Sutherland, the consequences of human interactions – particularly as these take place within intimate personal groups do lead to the development of criminality.

• Sutherland was of the view that every crime is the product of the learning process through interaction. In other words he proposed Differential Association as a general theory of crime – that is, it is a theory with the capacity to explain all crime. But to what extent is this true?

• For example, how able is this theory to explain crimes committed by people of high socio-economic status in the course of performing their duties – that is, white collar crimes?

Session Outline

• The main topics to be covered in this session are as follows: -

• Topic One Differential Association – the main propositions of the theory

• Topic Two Criticisms of the Differential Association theory

• Topic Three The utility of the theory

Objectives/Expected outcomes for the session

On the completion of this session, you should be able to –

• Describe the main propositions of Sutherland’s theory

• Explain the basis for criticizing the differential association theory

• Assess the utility of the theory

Topic One Differentia Association

– main propositions of the theory

• Introduction

• Most of the things that we do, - like eating for example or dressing up for an occasion, our language, our healthcare practices, or the things that we believe in - indeed, generally, the way that we respond to situations – is determined by the culture in which we have been brought up.

• In other words, to a large extent, the social influences that people encounter determine their behaviour. Whether a person becomes a law abiding citizen or a criminal would then depend on the contacts that he/she may have made with criminal values, attitudes, definitions and behavior patterns. .

Introduction cotd

• This proposition underlies one of the important and perhaps controversial theories of crime causation- namely, the Differential Association theory formulated by Edwin Sutherland in 1939.

• This theory, as suggested earlier, is purely sociological because of the interactive process involved and creates a kind of situation that produces crime

Main propositions of the Differential Association theory

• The main points in Edwin Sutherland’s Differential Association theory are

made up of nine propositions. • Criminal behaviour is learned; • Criminal behaviour is learnt through interaction with other persons in a

process of communication. A person does not become a criminal simply by living in a criminal environment. Crime is learned by participation with others in verbal and non verbal communication;

• The principal part of the learning of criminal behavior occurs within intimate personal groups. Families and friends have the most influence on the learning of deviant behavior. Their communications far outweigh those of the mass media;

Learning of techniques, motives, drives, etc

• When criminal behaviour is learnt, the learning includes:

• The techniques of committing the crime which are sometimes very complicated or sometimes very simple; and

• The learning includes also the specific direction of motives, drives, rationalization and attitudes. Young offenders learn not only how to shoplift, crack a safe, pick a lock or roll a joint, but also how to rationalize and defend their actions. They learn as well the attitudes, the mannerisms and other traits of behavior appropriate to criminality.

Definition of the legal code as favourable or not favourable

• The specific direction of motives (i.e. the desirability of the crime with reference to benefits) drives, rationalization etc. are learned from definitions of the legal code as favourable or unfavourable to the violation of laws.

• A person becomes a criminal when there is an excess of definitions favourable to the violation of law over definitions unfavourable.

• In other words, an individual becomes a criminal if the personal associations he makes with other people (or with criminals) are preponderantly favorable to the violation of the law rather than the reverse. This is the basic principle of differential association.

Excess of definitions favourable to the violation of law

• This proposition can be explained from two perspectives.

• If you a friend to some one who is a criminal(for example a smuggler) you are most likely to want to emulate his criminal behaviour (by getting into smuggling) if more often, he tells you that the act of smuggling prohibited goods is so easy, easy, easy! These are definitions favourable to the violation of the legal code prohibiting smuggling.

• The more often you get the impression that doing the crime is easy, the higher will be you desire to attempt it.

• However if he were often to give you the impression that the crime of smuggling is fraught with dangerous risks, which often terminate in arrests and punishment, you would most likely no desire to get into the act.

The key principle of DA

• Alternatively, if the most of the people you often interact with define the legal codes as rules that must be obeyed, you would not likely commit crimes compared to being surrounded by a lot of people who disagree with the laws and feel that they should not be obeyed.

• This is the key principle of differential association. In other words, leaning criminal behaviour is not simply a matter of associating with bad companions. Rather, the learning depends on how many definitions we learn that are favourable to law violation as opposed to those that are not.

DA varies with frequency, duration, intensity…

• Differential association may vary. in other words, the extent to the associations and definitions will result in crime may depend on the frequency of these associations, their duration and on their intensity as well as upon how early in the individual’s life they occur, on the assumption that the earlier the influence, the more formative it is likely to be.

• The process of learning criminal behaviour by association with criminal and anti- criminal patterns involves all the mechanisms all the mechanisms that are contained in any other learning. Learning criminal behaviour patterns is very much like learning conventional behaviour patterns and is not simply a matter of observation and imitation.

Needs and values do not explain crime…

• While criminal behaviour is a response to general needs or values, it is not explained by these general needs and values, since non criminal behaviour is similarly in response to the same needs and values.

• As an illustration, shop lifters steal to get what they want; others work to get money to get what they want. The general need or value involved is “getting what you want” and since this need explains why people work to get money to get what they want, it cannot at the same time explain why other people would steal to get what they want!

• It is useful to keep in mind that Sutherland postulated differential association as a general theory of crime; in other words, he claimed that his theory had the capacity to explain the development of all criminal behaviour.

Topic Two Criticism of the DA theory

• Introduction • Since the publication of this theory many scholars have tested, re-

examined and sometimes ridiculed the differential association theory which claimed the capacity to explain the development of all criminal behaviour.

• It is the practice in the social sciences that when a new theory emerges, it is subjected to field testing in order to establish its applicability under different or similar circumstances.

• If you would recall, we have earlier discussed the field tests carried out with reference to both Merton’s Anomie theory and Cohen’s sub cultural theory. What has been the basis of criticizing Sutherland?

Not a general theory

• The Critique

• Much of the criticisms of the theory stem from errors in interpretation, according to Adler, Mueller and Laufer (1998) For example, the critics posed the question, why is it that not everyone who is in heavy (intense) and prolonged contact with criminal behaviour patterns becomes a criminal?

• As an illustration, how do prison officers who come into constant contact with more criminal associations than non criminal ones escape from learning to become criminals themselves?

• Sutherland was criticized also on the basis of the fact that the whole tone of the differential association theory tends towards minimizing all other factors but that of social learning. In other words, the critiques suggested that the differential association theory cannot be offered as an explanation for all crime.

Pathological crimes are not learned

• Sutherland had postulated differential association as a general, single factor theory of crime.

• The critics of differential association argue for example that there are certain cases in which the role of pathology is so obvious as to be indisputable, as for example murder committed by a schizophrenic cannot be attributed to learning, since there is a clear case of mental abnormality involved.

• Neither can homicide committed as a result of jealous rage be explained by learning. Thus the differential association theory does not appear to do justice to the researches into the constitutional and psychopathological roots of criminal behaviour.

DA cannot explain white collar crime

• Further, Sutherland was criticized on his application of his theory to the explanation of white collar criminality.

• As defined by Sutherland, white collar criminality refers to crimes committed by persons of high social standing, in the course of performing their duties.

• McCorkle and Korn (1954) have stated in a review of Sutherland’s theory that his analysis of white collar crime produced evidence most damaging to his theory. They claim that such white collar crime as some cases of embezzlement (misappropriation of funds) cannot be accounted for in terms of contacts with other embezzlers, or white collar offenders.

“All have sinned”

• This is because, according to the critics, many white collar criminals have been law abiding citizens, have rarely had associates from the criminal world, and have worked secretly and alone, and that often, the offence seems to be the result of some personal crises.

• Cressey (1950) agrees with this view. • In reaction, Sutherland pointed out that this criticism ignores the

association with non-criminal patterns. He explained that ‘all have sinned,’ and that even though a person who commits a crime for the first time may not have had any direct associations with criminal elements, yet he has had associations with individuals who have committed criminal acts (but may not have been arrested) since the entire populations probably have committed criminal acts. Further he says that learning arises from more than direct contact.

DA does not explain the origin of criminality

• A further short coming of the differential association theory is that it has little to say about the origin of crimes in general.

• Who was the very first criminal and from whom did he learn the techniques – since he/she was the first ever?

• Crimes are postulated as already existing. The theory is only concerned with how they are then transmitted. Furthermore, the assumption that all criminality is learnt from others has been challenged by those who believe that although social restraint had to be learned, aggressive and predatory behaviour comes all too naturally from the cradle.

The Swan Song –DA untenable as a general theory

• Regardless of whether one accepts Sutherland’s notions’ they cannot be discarded on the grounds that an individual who suddenly commits a crime did not have the required associations. One cannot trace the associations, using the term in the broad sense, of any individual with any degree of accuracy. For what may seem petty and incidental may actually be critical.

• Sutherland himself recognized the untenability of his single factor theory, as could be read in his posthumously published. “The Swan Song of Differential Association” - after twenty two years of unremitting thought, He became convinced that other factors such as opportunities, intensity of need and availability of alternatives, play their part in the causation of crime in addition to differential association.

Topic Three Utility of the DA theory

• Introduction

• Notwithstanding the criticisms reviewed in the preceding section, the differential association theory has had a profound influence on criminology.

• Several scholars have tested it empirically and modified it to incorporate psychologically based learning theory. Others used it as a foundation for their theorizing. Further the theory has useful policy implications.

• What are some of the outcomes of the tests conducted using the differential association theory?

Validation studies

• The main thrust of these studies was to determine whether Sutherland’s principles lend themselves to empirical measurement.

• James Short (1960) tested a sample of 126 boys and 150 girls at a training school and reported a consistent relationship between delinquent behaviour and frequency, duration, intensity and how early the interaction with delinquent peers began.

• In another test, according to Adler, Mueller and Laufer (1998) researchers found that the chance of committing a delinquent act depends on whether friends commit the same act. Hirschi (1969) demonstrated that boys with delinquent friends are more likely to become delinquent.

Rochester studies

• Research on seventh and eighth grade students attending Rochester (New York) public schools in the late 1980 and early 1990s shows that gang membership is strongly associated with peer delinquency and the amount of delinquency and drug use.

• In another study, Mar Warr (1993) demonstrated that while the duration of delinquent friendships over a long period of time has greater effect than exposure over a short, it is recent friendships rather than earlier friendships that have the greatest effect on delinquency.

Study of adults

• According to Adler, Mueller and Laufer (1998) adults as well have been the subject of differential association studies.

• One of these studies involved two thousand residents of New Jersey, Oregon and Iowa who were asked to indicate the number of people they knew personally who had engaged in deviant behaviour and how many were frequently in trouble.

• They were asked also how often they attended church (assumed to be related to definitions unfavourable to the violation of law. This differential association scale correlated significantly with such crimes as illegal gambling, income tax cheating and theft.

Consistency of DA with known facts

• Sutherland’s theory is said to be consistent with much of the evidence available on the incidence of criminal behavior. As for example

• Crime does tend to cluster in social groups like families, neighbourhoods and gangs;

• The theory is also compatible with much folk wisdom expressed in common sayings about “birds of a feather flocking together” or “getting into bad company”;

• It is also strongly supported by current experimental work on the psychology of small groups. These have shown the great importance which pressure from an individual’s reference group has upon his behaviour and judgment. The emphasis in Sutherland’s theory is upon social groups of this kind, as agencies of education on crime.

Impact of DA on other theories

• Sutherland’s theory gave birth to other theoretical formulations based on the principle of association.

• Glaser’s theory (1964) for example, stresses in his formulation, the role of a model in a personal identification context. He suggested that a person becomes deviant as a result of identifying himself with a model real or imaginary to whom, he imagines, his nonconformist behavior would be acceptable.

• There is also much in the differential association theory that is compatible or reminiscent of the ideas of the ecological school. Ecologists like Shaw and McKay (1942) agree with Sutherland in stressing the importance of the social group represented in a narrower sense by the neighbourhood community.

Impact on the Ecological theory

• They point to the continuity of the group and its norms in spite of an ever changing membership.

• As each new migrant (or indeed, each new infant) arrives in the neighbourhood he/she finds himself/herself confronted by an established society with its own standards of right and wrong and its own accepted ways of behaving.

• The new entrant feels the need to belong but he/she will find acceptance only if he/she behaves in the way expected of him/her. This way, the resident in a delinquent neighborhood is under a strong social pressure to be delinquent also.

• Both the differential association and the ecological theories thus emphasize in their different ways the normality of criminal behaviour. It is said to be the product of a process of social learning like most other social behaviour.

• Policy Implications • If, according to the differential association theory, a person can become

criminal by learning definitions favourable to the violation of laws, it follows then that programs that expose the youth to definitions favorable to conventional behaviour should reduce criminality.

• Such educational efforts as Head Start and the Perry Preschool Project in the United States have attempted to do just this. The same theory underlies many of the treatment programs for young school drop outs and pregnant teenagers

Summary

• Criminal behavior is learnt through interaction with other persons in a process of communication.

• A person does not become a criminal simply by living in a criminal environment. Crime is learned by participation with others in verbal and non verbal communication.

• The principal part of the learning of criminal behaviour occurs within intimate personal groups The learning includes the techniques of committing the crime which are sometimes very complicated or sometimes very simple; as well as the specific direction of motives, drives, rationalization and attitudes.

Summary cotd

• Much of the criticisms of the Differential Association theory stem from errors in interpretation.

• For example, the critics posed the question, why is it that not everyone who is in heavy (intense) and prolonged contact with criminal behavior patterns becomes a criminal?

• As an illustration, how do prison officers who come into constant contact with more criminal associations than non criminal ones escape from learning to become criminals themselves?

Summary cotd

• The critics of the theory argue that becoming a criminal as a result of learning cannot be postulated as an explanation for all crime.

• They point out that there are certain cases in which the role of pathology is so obvious as to be indisputable, as for example murder committed by a schizophrenic cannot be attributed to learning, since there is a clear case of mental abnormality involved. Neither can homicide committed as a result of jealous rage be explained by learning.

• Studies carried out to test the theory of differential association using young people and adults variously reported a consistent relationship between delinquent behaviour and frequency, duration, intensity and how early the interaction with delinquent peers began.

Assignment

•How can the Differential Association theory be effectively applied to the prevention of criminals and the treatment of crime? Discuss with illustrative examples

References

• Abotchie, Chris, (2016) Sociology of Deviant Behaviour, Accra, Olive Tree Printing and Publishing

• Abotchie, Chris, (2010) Sociology of Deviant Behaviour, Accra, ICDE

• Adler, F. Mueller, G.O.W And Laufer , S. (1998)Criminology, Boston: McGraw-Hill.