Learning Theories
Crime is learned
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Crime is learned, like other behaviors
Focus on content and process of learning
– What crimes can be learned?
– What behaviors that support crime can be learned?
– How does this learning take place?
– What cultural supports for this learning are present?
Link with strain theory
– Social structure may set the stage where learning takes
place
What is learning?
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Habits and knowledge that develop when individuals interact with their
environment
– Not instinctual or biological
Current learning theories based on association
– Classical conditioning – passive learning
 Associating bell with meat produces salivation when bell rings
– Operant conditioning – active learning
 Organism learns how to get what it wants
 Press a lever to get food – associate lever with food
– Social Learning – active learning + cognition
 Direct - reinforcement through rewards and punishments
 Vicarious - reinforcement by observing what happens to others
 Criminological Theories - crime is a “normally learned behavior”
Learning crime through
differential association (Sutherland)
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Criminal behavior is learned from persons who transmit ideas or
“definitions” that favor law-breaking
Two basic elements of the theory
– Content of what is learned
 techniques of committing the crime
 the underlying drives, rationalizations and attitudes
– Process by which learning takes place
 Learning occurs in intimate groups
Motives and drives for behavior originate in attitudes towards legal
codes by a person’s social group
– “Normative conflict” – societal and group norms may be in conflict
– “Definitions” can be favorable/unfavorable to lawbreaking
– Delinquency is caused by an excess of definitions favorable to
lawbreaking
Views on differential association
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Criticisms
– It focuses on juvenile crime committed in groups
 Perhaps delinquents simply “flock together”
 Not all who associate with delinquents become delinquent
– Hard to test: How can we identify and count the definitions
favorable and unfavorable to law in each setting?
Cannot apply to all kinds of crime
– Difficult to use to explain differences in crime rates in different places
and between different demographic groups
Defenses
– Strength, intensity of associations vary
– It includes a cognitive (active processing) component in learning
– Those with more delinquent friends do commit more crimes
– Those reporting more definitions favorable to crime commit more crime
–
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Cultural & subcultural
learning theories
Walter B. Miller:
Learning to be delinquent from a gang
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Lower and middle-class cultures are distinct
Middle-class emphasizes achievement
Lower-class has different concerns, which are a breeding
ground for crime
– toughness, smartness (street sense), excitement, fate,
autonomy
– Male role models often absent, so an exaggerated sense of
masculinity results
– Crowding and domestic conditions send boys to the street,
where they form gangs
Wolfgang and Ferracutti:
Learning violence from a violent subculture
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Violence is a cultural expression for lower socioeconomic status
males
Many homicides result from very trivial events
– Defending honor of relatives, neighborhood
Significance of an event (e.g., a jostle) is differentially perceived
by races and socioeconomic classes
– Persons who respond as socially expected are admired those who do not are put down
– Causes of “passion” behavior are ideas - norms, values,
expectations - that originate in social conditions
Don’t focus on the origin of a subculture
– Worry instead about the ideas it generates
– Remedy is to disperse and assimilate the subcultures
Elijah Anderson:
Learning violence in a black “street” subculture
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Criminogenic environment
– High concentration of poverty
– Decline in legitimate jobs, increase in illegitimate jobs
– Drugs, guns, crime and violence
– Declining welfare payments, no hope for the future
– Lack of faith in C.J. system
Mainstream code of civility, respected by “decent” people, has no value
on the “street”
Code of the street
– Cultural adaptation to living in declining circumstances
– “Respect”, “disrespect” and “manhood”
– Spreads to “decent” children through contagion and necessity
Theory is partly cultural, like Wolfgang & Ferracutti; partly
social/structural, like Merton
Social learning theories
Akers:
Learning through differential reinforcement
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Behaviors can be learned as well as ideas
Differential association – Behaviors can be learned socially, from
others and from “reference groups” whose definitions are favorable or
unfavorable to lawbreaking
Differential reinforcement – Behaviors can be learned socially and nonsocially, according to their actual or anticipated consequences
(“differential reinforcement”)
– Learned socially through approval/disapproval by others
– Learned non-socially (e.g., getting sick/high on drugs)
– Learned vicariously by observing consequences of behavior for
others
Once criminal behavior begins, it continues if reinforced either socially
or non-socially
Structural conditions (inequality, strain) affect a person’s differential
associations, definitions, models and reinforcements
Athens:
Violentization
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How do persons become violent criminals?
– Based on his observations growing up in a violent environment
– Theory developed through in-depth interviews with 58 prisoners
Three steps
– Brutalization - victim of intra-familial violence, and coached in
violence
– Belligerence - person decides to stop being the victim and take
charge of their situation
– Violent performances - person experiments with violence
 Failures may lead to exit from violence
 Successes may lead to more violence & acquiring weapons
– Virulency - person treated differently by others, embraces image
 Sees violence as best response to many situations
Discussion
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If criminal behavior can be learned by “normal” individuals, then
the cause may lie in the social structure
– How society is organized
– Rules and values that support thats structure
So...
– Is crime whatever is so defined by the ruling class?
(precept of conflict criminology)
– Or does culture mediate between social structure and
behavior?
Social structure  culture/subculture  behavior