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Criminological Theories
LEARNING THEORIES OF CRIME
Some theories in criminology believe that criminality is a
function of individual socialization, how individuals have been
influenced by their experiences or relationships with family
relationships, peer groups, teachers, church, authority figures,
and other agents of socialization. These are called learning
theories, and specifically social learning theories, because
criminology never really embraced the psychological
determinism inherent in most learning psychologies. They are
also less concerned for the content of what is learned (like
cultural deviance theories), and more concerned with
explaining the social process by which anyone, regardless of
race, class, or gender, would have the potential to become a
criminal. Social Learning, Control, and Labeling theories are all
examples of social process theories.
LEARNING THEORIES OF CRIME
Learning is defined as habits and knowledge that develop as a
result of experiences with the environment, as opposed to
instincts, drives, reflexes, and genetic
predispositions. Associationism (developed by Aristotle,
Hobbes, Locke, and Hume) is the oldest learning theory. It is
based on the idea that the mind organizes sensory experiences
in some way, and is called cognitive psychology
today. Behaviorism (developed by Pavlov and Skinner) is the
second oldest learning theory. It is based on the idea that the
mind requires a physical response by the body in order to
organize sensory associations. There are two types of learning
in behavioral psychology: classical conditioning (where stimuli
produce a given response without prior training); and operant
conditioning (where rewards and punishments are used to
reinforce given responses). Examples of operant conditioning
include verbal behavior, sexual behavior, driving a car, writing a
paper, wearing clothing, or living in a house.
LEARNING THEORIES OF CRIME
Most social behavior is of an operant nature. Imitation
(sometimes called contagion) is the oldest social learning
theory, and derives from the work of Tarde (1843-1904), a
sociologist who said crime begins as fashion and later
becomes a custom. The Social learning theory that has had the
most impact on criminology is associated with the work of
Bandura (1969), a psychologist who formulated the principles
of "stimulus control" (stimulus-to-stimulus reinforcement
rather than stimulus-behavior reinforcement), outlined the
stages of "modeling" (attend, retain, rehearse, perform), and
pioneered the field of "vicarious learning" (media influences,
for example). Of these many contributions, the one about
stimulus-to-stimulus chains of learning is the most important
since it does away with the need for extrinsic rewards and
punishments, arguing that observational learning can take
place without them. Bandura's ideas about role modeling
resonated well with criminology because since the 1930s,
criminology had a similar theory (differential
association). Julian Rotter was also another psychologist who
had an enormous impact on social learning theory in
criminology.
SUTHERLAND'S DIFFERENTIAL
ASSOCIATION THEORY
Sutherland (1883-1950) is called the father of
American criminology. In 1924, he wrote a book
called Criminology, the first fully sociological
textbook in the field. He first put forth his theory in
the second edition of 1934, revised it again in 1939,
and the theory has remained unchanged since the
fourth edition of 1947. When Sutherland died in
1950, Donald Cressey continued to popularize the
theory. It's called Differential Association (DA)
theory, and Sutherland devised it because his study
of white collar crime (a field he pioneered) and
professional theft led him to believe that there were
social learning processes that could turn anyone
into a criminal, anytime, anywhere.
SUTHERLAND'S DIFFERENTIAL
ASSOCIATION THEORY
Let's look at the 9 points of DA theory:
1. Criminal behavior is learned....
2. Criminal behavior is learned in interaction with others in a process
of communication....
3. Learning criminal behavior occurs within primary groups (family,
friends, peers, their most intimate, personal companions)
4. Learning criminal behavior involves learning the techniques,
motives, drives, rationalizations, and attitudes....
5. The specific direction of motives and attitudes is learned from
definitions of the legal codes as favorable or unfavorable....
6. A person becomes a criminal when there is an excess of definitions
favorable to violation of law over definitions unfavorable to violation of
law.... (this is the principle of differential association)
7. Differential associations vary in frequency, duration, priority, and
intensity (frequent contacts, long contacts, age at first contact,
important or prestigious contacts)
8. The process of learning criminal behavior involves all the
mechanisms involved in any other learning....
9. Although criminal behavior is an expression of general needs and
attitudes, criminal behavior and motives are not explained nor
excused by the same needs and attitudes (criminals must be
differentiated from noncriminals)
AKERS' DIFFERENTIAL
REINFORCEMENT THEORY
According to Akers (1985), people are first indoctrinated into
deviant behavior by differential association with deviant
peers. Then, through differential reinforcement, they learn how
to reap rewards and avoid punishment by reference to the
actual or anticipated consequences of given behaviors. These
consequences are the social and nonsocial reinforcements that
provide a support system for those with criminal careers or
persistent criminality. Structural conditions affect a person's
differential reinforcements. Criminal knowledge is gained
through reflection over past experience. Potential offenders
consider the outcomes of their past experiences, anticipate
future rewards and punishments, and then decide which acts
will be profitable and which ones will be dangerous.
AKERS' DIFFERENTIAL
REINFORCEMENT THEORY
To get to the point where criminal behavior is activated by
discriminative cues (norms), the whole process follows seven
stages:
1. Criminal behavior is learned through conditioning or
imitation.
2. Criminal behavior is learned both in nonsocial reinforcing
situations or nonsocial discriminative situations and thru social
interaction.
3. The principal components of learning occur in groups.
4. Learning depends on available reinforcement contingencies.
5. The type and frequency of learning depends on the norms by
which these reinforcers are applied.
6. Criminal behavior is a function of norms which are
discriminative for criminal behavior.
7. The strength of criminal behavior depends upon its
reinforcement.
JEFFERY'S DIFFERENTIAL
REINFORCEMENT THEORY
Jeffery takes for granted the existence of constant stimuli in the
environment, but argues that the key variables of deprivation and
satiation are what make these stimuli reinforcing or not. A person
deprived of something will respond to a stimulus in a much different
way than a person satiated with something. Crimes against property
produce things, like money or cars, which are themselves powerful
reinforcers. Crimes against persons most often involve what Jeffery
calls negative reinforcement, the removal of an aversive stimulus
(such as when a man kills his unfaithful wife). Drug offenses are
reinforced by biochemical changes in the human body. A criminal act
may lead to reinforcement, but it may also lead to
punishment. Punishment is an important variable in Jeffery's theory
because, essentially, he argues that crime occurs because criminal
acts in the past, for a particular actor, have not been punished
enough. Criminals have different conditioning histories, but it is
possible for a person living in a criminal environment to not become a
criminal and for criminals to be found in noncriminal
environments. Associations with others do not matter. The behavior
is shaped by discriminative stimuli rather than reinforcing stimuli.
MATZA'S NEUTRALIZATION
THEORY
Neutralization theory (Sykes & Matza 1957) holds that people
learn the values, attitudes, and techniques of criminal behavior
through subterranean values, which exist side by side with
conventional values. Few people are "all good" or "all
bad." Matza argues that most criminals are not involved in
crime all the time. They drift from one behavior to another,
sometimes deviant, sometimes conventional. Sykes and Matza
state that criminals frequently admire honest, law abiding
persons, and therefore are not immune from guilt and the
demands of conformity. They have to use excuses that allow
them to drift into crime. In this way, neutralization theory is a
control theory if the excuses are seen as post-hoc
rationalizations. If they exist in a subterranean fashion (as
originally thought), then it's a learning theory.
A GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING
CRIMINOLOGICAL THEORY
This page provides practice at three important skills: (1) translation of
abstract, general statements into measurable, plain English
(operationalization); (2) identification of the Independent Variable
(cause), Dependent Variable (effect), and Other Factor(s)
(specification); and (3) figuring out other possible relationships
between variables in a theory (elaboration).
Integration is a fourth skill we could have added, but for now, let's
concentrate on the three basic ones in italics. The SAMPLE we will
work with is the following statement:
"Criminality is a probabilistic event determined by the frequency and
quality of interaction with persons holding definitions favorable or
unfavorable to violation of the law."
In unlocking the meaning of the above statement, we will use three (3)
ordinary, everyday TOOLS at our disposal: (1) Name Recognition; (2)
Sentence Analysis; and (3) Visualization. The insights these tools
might yield about operationalization, specification, and elaboration
may not come in any systematic order. That is, we may arrive at an
understanding of elaboration first, specification second, and
operationalization third; or any other order. We are concerned with
understanding theory, not following any established procedure.
SENTENCE ANALYSIS
Take the beginning of Sutherland's theory: "Criminality is a
probabilistic event determined by..." Now, criminality is an old
word leftover from the days of biological determinists who were
trying not to sound so absolutely certain. They realized that
heredity could only account for about 50% of something at best, so
they started coming up with phrases like "propensity for",
"predisposed to", "inclination towards", and "criminality". So when
Sutherland uses this word, you get the idea that he is talking about
being inclined toward crime, not actually committing crime. This is
called SPECIFYING the Dependent Variable, or effect. For people
new to the science of criminology, it is astonishing how many
theories are not about crime at all, but the "readiness" to commit
crime, "potential" crime, or "tipping points" in the community's
tolerance. Anyway, the point is that there is more than one
Dependent Variable in criminology. Few theories provide
explanations for actual crime or specific criminal events.
SENTENCE ANALYSIS
Another part of SENTENCE ANALYSIS is to find what is called the
"relational" word. Below, I am providing you with some general
interpretations, but do not assume any automatic translations:
"varies with" -- this means things fluctuate together; as one thing goes
up, the other thing goes down; usually used to describe a possible
inverse relationship.
"where..." -- while not technically a verb, this word usually indicates a
feedback relationship, where things go up or down in response to one
another. Often, but not always, the case involves an important Z factor
which moderates, distorts, or confounds the relationship. Relationals
like "varies", "fluctuates", "predominates", "associated with", and
"overrepresented by" are usually found when the theorist is dealing
with sociodemographic variables, like age or race.
"seems to be" -- this wishy-washy language usually means that the
theorist suspects a weak relationship, probably way less than 50%.
"tends" -- this might mean, but not always, that there are important Z
factors which are antecedent, intervening, or contingent; that is, that
come before, in the middle, or after an X and Y relationship. Or, it may
be a cojoint relation.
"is conducive to" -- this usually means that the cause is a mysterious,
unknown construct; typically found in highly abstract theories
involving words like anomie, relative deprivation, norms, or controls.
In some cases, it refers to a confounding or contextual relationship.
SENTENCE ANALYSIS
Don't let the words I just used, such as cojoint and
confounding, intimidate you. They are related to our third,
everyday tool, VISUALIZATION. Here, you want to look at the
nouns in the theoretical statement, and try to figure out which
ones were intended to be the X's (causes), the Y's (effects), and
the Z's (other factors). At a minimum, all theories require at
least two variables, an X and a Y, but in real life, most theories
are complex and have at least one Z factor. In the interest of
what is called parsimony, theorists try to keep their models
down to 3-5 variables. In visualizing, also called MODELING,
you can determine the relative importance of these Z factors
and their impact on the X-Y relationship by looking at how the
variables can be rearranged. Sometimes, the theorist has done
this for you by "controlling", "partialling", or "factoring out"
certain variables, but this is only a statistical solution. To
understand all the possible ELABORATIONS of a model, you
need to think through all the possibilities, especially those that
the theorist forgot. It would be helpful to look at the page of
modeling relationships between variables before reading
further.
There are some rules of thumb about estimating the relative
importance of variables with intrinsic models, but again, these are just
interpretive guidelines, not hard-and-fast rules:
X is usually a variable from the discipline a theorist was trained in.
X is usually more important than Y, especially if the theorist seems
more interested in collecting causes (i.e., constructs an index).
Y is more important than X if the theorist seems more interested in
predicting symptoms, syndromes, or effects (i.e., constructs a scale).
X is always more important than Z (a third factor), always.
X is usually less measurable than Y or Z, because it's an unknown
construct.
X and Z are usually hard to tell apart, and may seem like the same
thing.
When more than one Z is in the statement, the first one mentioned is
the Z in estimating a parsimonious model.
With regard to measurability, "frequency" is
obviously easier to measure than "quality",
and I wouldn't even bother with trying to
figure out whether "unfavorable" definitions
are easier than "favorable" ones since they
are about equally difficult. But "definitions"
(that strange word) appear to be the least
measurable thing in the whole sentence.
Definitions might be the main construct (the
idea in the theorist's mind) which is our X
(causal factor).
Since we already know the Y (effect) factor:
probability of criminal inclinations, from an earlier
discussion, we need to estimate the Z (other) factor.
If we followed our last rule of thumb (rule #7), we
would choose frequency over quality, but the same
reasoning we used in determining our construct
applies (as well as rule #5), and we should choose
quality over frequency. Why? Because the harder-tomeasure rule is more important than the position-insentence rule. Other reasons: quality is a more
sociological word than frequency; Sutherland seems
to like more unmeasurable concepts; and Sutherland
seems more interested in collecting causes of which
quality might be a part instead of frequency which
runs the risk of being associated with symptoms.
There are, of course, other ways to arrive at these same
conclusions. We can draw inferences out of the Approach and
Perspective the theory is located under. Since approaches
contain assumptions about human nature, models of society,
and so forth, we can use this valuable information to rule out
other possibilities. We know that learning theories, in general,
hold to a blank slate position on human nature. We know that
they hold to a consensus model of society, a process (motion
picture) orientation toward human action , and a micro-level
explanation of social forces. Any one of these provide clues to
unlock the theory. The consensus assumption, for example,
tells us that "definitions" might be important building blocks in
social order, without which, society might collapse. This
reassures us that "definitions" are the X in Sutherland's theory.
In fact, definitions are beginning to sound an awful lot like
norms, but they're not. They might play some part in an
interactionist account of social order, but this would be a
micro-macro link issue which is beyond our concern. Adding
norms would create an extrinsic model; adding a social order
variable like degree of solidarity would be adding an
exogenous factor.