CRIMINOLOGY

Criminology

Criminology

Criticism Sutherland's Differential Association Theory

Many criticized Sutherland's differential association theory; supporters argued that criticism often resulted from misinterpretation of Sutherland's theory.

Donald R. Cressey argued persuasively that many of the critiques were simply "literary errors" or misinterpretation on the part of the critics. For example, the theory was judged by critics to be invalid because not everyone who had come into contact with criminals became criminal as a result. This misinterprets the theory's proposition that criminal behaviour is learned through differential association (relative exposure to criminal and noncriminal patterns) not simply through any contact with persons who have violated the law. (Akers: 1996: 229)

However, Cressey also pointed out two major weaknesses of Sutherland's theory. The first problem was that the concept of "definitions" in the theory was not precisely defined, and the statement did not give good guidance on how to operationalize the ratio or "excess of definitions" favourable to criminal behaviour over definitions unfavourable to criminal behaviour. The second real problem was that it left the learning process unspecified. There is virtually no clue in Sutherland's theory as to what in particular would be included in "all the mechanisms that are involved in any of other learning (Akers: 1996: 229-230)

Another important criticism argued that Sutherland's theory is a "cultural deviance" theory as a way of showing that it made wrong presumptions about human behaviour and the role of culture in deviant behaviour. Matsueda (1988) believed it "reduces his (Sutherland's) theory to a caricature" and Bernard objected to the way in which "the cultural deviance label has been applied to the original differential association and social learning revision"(Bernard and Snipes, 1995: Vold and Bernard, 1986: 227-229) But Akers denies this criticism as another misinterpretation of Sutherland's theory:

According to this critique, differential association/social learning theory rests on the assumption that socialization is completely successful and that cultural variability is unlimited, cannot explain individual differences in deviance within the same group and applies only to group differences, has no way of explaining violation of norms to which the individual subscribes, and proposes culture as the single cause of crime. I conclude that the usual attribution of cultural deviance assumptions and explanation to differential association is based on misinterpretations. (Akers: 1996:229)

Perhaps the most fundamental research problem involves identifying the content of definitions favourable to crime. This is related to the criticism that differential association theory cannot be tested empirically. (Matsueda, 1988: 296)

Warr and Stafford (1991: 862) studied the mechanism by which delinquency is socially transmitted. They compared the effect of peer's attitude and effect of peer's behaviour and found that delinquency stemmed rather from behaviour of peers than the consequence of attitudes acquired from peers. This means that Sutherland's assertion that attitude of peers is major factor of delinquency is incomplete. The attitudes of adolescents indeed do influent delinquency. "However, quite apart from the attitudes of adolescents and those of their friends, the behaviour of friends has a strong, independent effect on adolescents' behaviour."

Differential association has been subject to a number of other ...