Psychological Explanations - Differential Association Theory Flashcards
How does DA theory suggest that crime is learned?
Individuals learn the values, attitudes and motives for offending via interaction with others.
What was Sutherland’s quote from 1924?
The conditions that are said to cause crime should be present when crime is present, and they should be absent when crime is absent
What 2 factors does offending arise from?
Learned attitudes towards offending and learning how to do specific offending acts.
What are Learning Attitudes?
If a person is surrounded by more pro-criminal attitudes than anti-criminal attitudes then they will go on to offend.
What is the mathematical equation for crime?
Frequency + Intensity + Duration = Likelihood of Offending.
How might reoffending be due to socialisation in prison?
Whilst inside prison inmates will learn specific techniques of offending from one another, more experienced criminals that they may be eager to put into practice upon their release. This may occur via observational learning and imitation or direction tuition.
What were Farrington’s findings.
They show that those living in deprived areas, surrounded by possible criminality, is a root cause of potential offending. This supports it because a person socialising with an offending group is more likely to offend. This suggests the risk factors are not biological, which support the theory.
What is the strength - White-collar/corporate.
Sutherland recognised that some crimes are clustered in inner-city, working-class communities, however some crimes are more prevalent amongst more affluent groups. Sutherland was interested in these crimes and how this may be a feature of middle-class social groups who share deviant norms and values.
What is the strength - Moving away from biology
He helped to turn the field into being centred around dysfunctional social circumstances and environments.
What is the limitation - hard to quantify
DA is difficult to test, e.g. it is hard to see how many pro-criminal attitudes they are exposed to, and the theory is based on how offending behaviour will occur if pro-crime attitudes outnumber anti-crime attitudes but it does not account for the importance of different attitudes such as parents.
What is the limitation - stereotyping
There is a danger with DA to assume that individuals who come from impoverished, crime-ridden backgrounds are ‘unavoidably criminal’. This theory suggests that exposure to pro-criminal values is sufficient to produce offending and ignores the fact that people might choose not to offend.
