Sutherland Evaluation
This theory provides a good explanation for certain types of violent crime, but cannot be applied to crimes committed by individuals acting alone. The theory is dated and underestimates the influence of the media (principle 3).
Approaches: Social. Imitation refers to the modelling of certain behaviour through the observation of others.
He rejected biological determinism and the extreme individualism of psychiatry, as well as economic explanations of crime.
Differential association is a type of SLT ( Bandura)
Perspectives : Behaviour is learned and reinforced by other in group (positive reinforcement). Sutherland held that crime is learned in association with those already involved in crime and that both the techniques of crime and attitudes are learned.
Reinforcement from peers and groups, conditioning.
Learnt behaviour from environment (points 3-5).Although family and peer groups are important, other social context such as schools can be equally important to learning
‘normative’ definitions (i.e. social norms). Differential reinforcement and punishment refers to "the balance of social non-social rewards and punishments associated with behaviour.
Positive reinforces (e.g., approval from friends, family, teachers) and negative reinforcers
(e.g., the avoidance of unpleasant experiences) tend to increase the likelihood that a certain act will occur. Imitation refers to the modelling of certain behaviour through the observation of others.
Reductionism/ Holism: Reductionist – mainly behavioural looking largely at process of learning.
Reductionist because it only looks at social and learning approach.
Determinism / Free will: Our friendship groups can profoundly affect criminality especially during adolescence, doesn’t take into account that we can choose our friendship groups.
Largely ignores free will. Individuals conditioned to learn in this way (stimulus response)
Individual/ situational: Ignores that some individuals can turn from crime. Explains behaviour from a situational point of view (groups). Doesn’t explain how crime can be conducted by individuals.
Nature / nurture: Nurture, the environment and people we associate with explains why people turn to crime
Ethnocentric: Can be applied to all social and cultural groups, although different cultures may see peer group explanation differently, and place greater responsibility on the individual.
Method: It has been argued that (weaknesses)
-theory, no evidence presented
-it explains crime initiation better than it explains crime continuation

-that its concepts are vague and poorly operationalized.
- does not explain the origin of crime,-difficult to measure the behaviour or attitudes associated with differential association.
(Strengths)
-Sutherland’s differential association theory and meta-analyses shows antisocial associates and attitudes are some of the best predictors of criminal behaviour.
-Differential association theory explains why any individual can become drawn towards abnormal (deviant) behaviour. His assertion is most useful when explaining peer influences among deviant youths or special mechanism of becoming certain criminal.
He challenged conventional theories by arguing that: The theory that criminal behaviour in general is due to poverty can now be shown to be invalid for three reasons.
-First, the generalization is based on a biased sample that omits almost entirely the behaviour of white-collar criminals.
-Second, the generalization that criminality is closely associated with poverty obviously does not apply to white-collar criminals because without small exception, by and large, they are not poor.
-Third, the conventional theories do not even explain lower class criminality.
These points could be used to compare and contrast with Farrington and Wikstrom studies in
‘Upbringing’. Though its shortcomings, differential association theory still is popular among criminologists for its simplicity and coherence.
Usefulness :
No one theory can perfectly explain every aspect of crime and deviant act. It needs to incorporate various theories for better explanation. However, even though it has some defects, Sutherland’s differential association theory has many strengths. Other social learning theories have been influenced by differential association and many scholars are continuously trying to test empirically the usefulness and validity of Sutherland's theory.
Through these efforts, Sutherland's theory is still being modified and is being developed in order to explain variety of deviances.