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Learning Objectives
At the end of the lessons, learners shall be able to:
• Understand and explain the concept of sociological positivism
• Identify the different sociological theories of crime causation
• Evaluate the contribution of sociological theories to
understand the causes of crimes
• Apply Merton’s typology of deviance to the real world and give
examples for each type
• Formulate solution to crime problems cause by sociological
factors
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Refers to things, place and people with whom man comes in contact and which
play a part in determining actions and conduct.
Sociological theories have generally asserted that criminal behavior is a normal
response of biologically and psychologically normal individuals to kinds of social
circumstances.
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Social Learning Theory
This theory posits that people learn from one
another, via observation, imitation, and modeling.
The theory has often been called a bridge between
behaviorist and cognitive learning theories because it
encompasses attention, memory, and motivation.
Observational learning can occur without the learner
demonstrating any new behavior. He explored the
question of what needs to happen for an observable
behavior to be learned (in addition to observation)
and cited four necessary steps: attention, retention,
reproduction, and motivation.
Social Learning Theory
Observation + 4 Necessary Steps = Learning
Attention: First off, the learner needs to pay
attention. If they are distracted, this will
influence the amount or quality of learning that
occurs.
Retention: How you can store the information
learned (i.e., retention) is important. Let’s face
it.
Motivation: The last step is motivation. To have
the most success for any observational
learning, you need to be motivated enough to
imitate the behavior that was modeled
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Differential Association Theory
A theory in criminology developed by Edwin
Sutherland, proposing that through interaction with
others, individuals learn the values, attitudes,
techniques, and motives for criminal behavior
This theory focuses on how individuals learn to
become criminals, but it does not concern itself with
why they become criminals.
Differential association predicts that an individual will
choose the criminal path when the balance of
definitions for law-breaking exceeds those for law-
abiding.
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Differential Association Theory
The principles of Sutherland’s theory of differential association can be summarized
into nine key points.
1.Criminal behavior is learned.
2.Criminal behavior is learned in interaction with other persons in a process of
communication.
3.The principal part of the learning of criminal behavior occurs within intimate
personal groups.
4.When criminal behavior is learned, the learning includes techniques of
committing the crime (which are sometimes very complicated, sometimes simple)
and the specific direction of motives, drives, rationalizations, and attitudes.
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Differential Association Theory
The principles of Sutherland’s theory of differential association can be summarized into nine key
points.
5. The specific direction of motives and drives is learned from definitions of the legal codes as
favorable or unfavorable.
6. A person becomes delinquent because of an excess of definitions favorable to violation of law
over definitions unfavorable to violation of the law.
7. Differential associations may vary in frequency, duration, priority, and intensity.
8. The process of learning criminal behavior by association with criminal and anti-criminal patterns
involves all of the mechanisms that are involved in any other learning.
9. While criminal behavior is an expression of general needs and values, it is not explained by those
needs and values, since non-criminal behavior is an expression of the same needs and values.
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Differential Reinforcement Theory
This theory is defined as the balance of anticipated or
actual rewards and punishments that follow or are
consequences of behavior.
It assumes people are born with a blank state and
thus, must be socialized and taught how to behave
through modeling and various forms of conditioning
like operant and classical conditioning.
Behavior that has positive consequences for the
actor is said to reinforce that behavior, making it
more likely that the behavior will be repeated in
similar situations. Behavior that is punished is less
likely to be repeated and may even be extinguished
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Differential Reinforcement Theory
Positive Punishment - Positive Reinforcement-
Reinforcement rewards
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Differential Reinforcement Theory
Negative Reinforcement-
Negative Punishment – turning off music while doing
getting cellphone taken away homework
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Differential Identification
Theory (Daniel Glaser)
• An explanation for crime and
deviance that holds that people
pursue criminal or
deviant behavior to the extent that
they identify themselves with real or
imaginary people
• Real and Fictional presentations on
televisions and in other mass media
provide information concerning
acceptable behavior.
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Differential Identification Theory
DIT an explanation for crime and deviance that holds
that people pursue criminal or deviant behavior to
the extent that they identify themselves with real or
imaginary people from whose perspective
their criminal or deviant behavior seems acceptable.
Real and Fictional presentations on televisions and in
other mass media provide information concerning
acceptable behavior.
For example, A child assumes the role portrayed in
the media
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Differential Identification Theory (Daniel Glaser/ Classer)
an explanation for crime and deviance that holds that people pursue criminal or
deviant behavior to the extent that they identify themselves with real or imaginary people
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Imitation- Suggestion Theory
Explains that delinquency and crime are matters that
are learned and adopted. Human progress, to be the
result of individuals engaged in relational behaviors
according to everyone's characteristics and generally
exemplifying one of three basic processes
—"Invention," "Imitation," or "Opposition.
Invention, according to Tarde, is the source of
all progress. Tarde believed that social factors
contribute to inventiveness
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Imitation- Suggestion Theory
Imitation, on the other hand, is much more
widespread in society. Most people are not inventive,
but only copy what they see from other people.
Tarde codified his ideas in the “three laws of
imitation”:
1. the law of close contact, explains that people have a
greater tendency to imitate the fashions or behaviors of those
around them
2. the law of imitation of superiors by inferiors, explains that
the poor or the young imitate the rich or the more experienced,
and that crimes among the poor are in fact their attempts to
imitate wealthy, high-status people.
3. the law of insertion. says that new behaviors are
superimposed on old ones and subsequently either reinforce or
extinguish previous behavior
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law of close contact imitation of superiors law of insertion
by inferiors
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In April 1992, a young man from a well-to-do East Coast family hitchhiked
to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. Four months
later his decomposed body was found by a party of moose hunters....His name
turned out to be Christopher Johnson McCandless. He’d grown up, I learned, in an
affluent suburb of Washington, D.C., where he’d excelled academically and had
been an elite athlete. Immediately after graduation, with honors, from Emory
University in the summer of 1990, McCandless dropped out of sight. He changed
his name, gave the entire balance of a twenty-four-thousand-dollar savings
account to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the
cash in his wallet. And then he invented a new life for himself, taking up residence
at the ragged margin of society, wandering across North America in search of raw,
transcendent experience. His family had no idea where he was or what had
become of him until his remains turned up in Alaska.
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Christopher McCandless grew up in a conforming, upper-middle-class
family and seemed to be on the fast track to success. He graduated from
Emory University with a 3.72 grade point average, and he spoke of going
to law school. Instead, he turned his back on his family, adopted the new
name of Alexander Supertramp, and set out to make his way alone in the
wilderness.
How might we explain this drastic
turnaround and McCandless’s blatant
rejection of societal norms and
expectations?
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Delinquent youth were either compelled nor committed
to their delinquent actions. contended that juvenile
delinquents drift between law-abiding and law-breaking
behavior.
proposes that juveniles sense an obligation to the law. This
obligation to the law remains in place most of the
time. However, when this obligation is strained, juvenile
delinquents tend to drift into crime.
When an employee sees their wages cut they can rationalize
stealing from their employer because they are earning less
money than before, essentially, the employee feels they
“deserve” it.
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According to Sykes and Matza, most delinquents have the
same values, beliefs and attitudes as those of law-abiding
citizens.
Some juveniles, however, learn techniques that allow
them to “neutralize” such values and attitudes
temporarily. Such a theory proposes that delinquents
disregard the controlling influences of rules and use these
techniques of neutralization to weaken the hold of society
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Five neutralization techniques:
1. Denial of Responsibility: This is where the criminal
views himself as a victim based on circumstance.
2. Denial of Injury: This is where a criminal feel like the
actions committed were victimless because no one
was physically hurt, or the crime committed was
committed against another criminal.
3. Denial of Victim: This goes back to circumstances.
Victims in this case are considered outcasts by the
general population so they deserved this type of
treatment.
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Five neutralization techniques:
4. The Condemnation of the Condemners: This is when
the criminal sees the labeler as a deviant in disguise, they
are just out to get them, or by attacking them the
wrongfulness of their behavior is confused.
5. Appealing to Higher Loyalties: The requirements of
larger society must be pushed to the side because of
affiliation in smaller groups, who directly provide fidelity
and protection to the individual, e.g., gangs
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Five neutralization techniques:
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In 1938, Frank Tannenbaum presented his own approach
to labeling theory in response to his studies of juvenile
participation in street gangs.
Tannenbaum describes the process of defining deviant
behavior as different among juvenile delinquents and
conventional society, causing a "tagging" of juveniles as
delinquent by mainstream society. The stigma that
accompanies the deviant "tag" causes a person fall into
deeper nonconformity
Self-concept is what times Frank's research to that of the
labeling theory.
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He views deviance as the creation of social groups and not
the quality of some act or behavior.
According to Becker, studying the act of the individual is
unimportant because deviance is simply rule breaking
behavior that is labeled deviant by persons in positions of
power. Essentially, the behavior of the person does not
matter until the label is applied. The rule breaking behavior
is constant, the labeling of the behavior varies.
Those persons who are prone to rule-breaking behavior see
themselves as morally at odds with those members of the
rule-abiding society Becker uses the term "outsider" to
describe a labeled rule-breaker or deviant that accepts the
label attached to them and view themselves as different
from "mainstream" society.
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It simply means that the reactions of the people and the
subsequent effect of those reactions create deviance.
Edwin M. Lemert distinguishes between primary and
secondary deviance.
An individual first commits primary deviance. Through a
process of labelling the individual is forced to play the role
of deviant. As a reaction to this role assignment (“You are
criminal!”), the labelled person adapts his behavior
according to the role assigned to him (“Then I am
criminal!”). This behavior reaction is called secondary
deviance.
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It simply means that the reactions of the people and the
subsequent effect of those reactions create deviance.
Edwin M. Lemert distinguishes between primary and
secondary deviance.
An individual first commits primary deviance. Through a
process of labelling the individual is forced to play the role
of deviant. As a reaction to this role assignment (“You are
criminal!”), the labelled person adapts his behavior
according to the role assigned to him (“Then I am
criminal!”). This behavior reaction is called secondary
deviance.
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Labeling theory states that people come to identify and behave in ways that reflect
how others label them. This theory is most associated with the sociology of crime
since labeling someone unlawfully deviant can lead to poor conduct. Describing
someone as a criminal, for example, can cause others to treat the person more
negatively, and, in turn, the individual acts out.
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It studies the relationship between the state and its
disseminating ideological structures, such as the media
and conservative elite ruling class, and other groups
further down in social and political hierarchies.
It also views society as a product of everyday social
interactions between individuals. The theory says that
people assign symbols and create meaning based
on their interactions with one another.
The powerful group can become significant other in the
less powerful group of generating meaning.
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Symbolic Interactionism (Edmund Husserl and George Herbert Mead)
The theory says that people assign symbols and create meaning based on their interactions with one
another.
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