Social Process
Theories of Crime
Chapter 8
Social Process Theories of Crime
• Attempt to explain how individuals become law
violators.
• Micro-level theories
• Typically do not approach crime and delinquency
as primarily a lower-class problem.
• Socializing influences are key to explaining
behavior (e.g., family, education, peers)
• Three forms of social process theories:
– Learning
– Culture Conflict
– Social Control
Learning Criminal Behavior
• Criminal behavior is learned in a social context.
• Law-breaking values, norms, and motives are
acquired through interaction with others.
• The skills and techniques are learned, although
their content varies widely with the complexity of
the crime.
• Crime is considered to be normal.
Edwin H. Sutherland Differential Association
• Theories thought to have substantial influence on
Sutherland’s Differential Association:
– Symbolic Interactionism
– Culture Transmission
– Culture Conflict
• Differential association suggests that person socialized
in disorganized neighborhoods are likely to have
associations that will encourage criminal adaptations.
• Wrote Criminology (1924), Principles of Criminology
(1934), and the Professional Thief (1937).
• White Collar Crime
Sutherland’s Nine Principles
of Differential Association
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:
a. techniques of committing the crime, which are
sometimes very complicated, sometimes very simple
b. the specific direction of motives, drives, rationalization,
and attitudes.
5. The specific direction of motives and drives is learned from
definitions of the legal codes as favorable or unfavorable.
Sutherland’s Nine Principles
of Differential Association, cont.
6. A person becomes delinquent because of an excess of
definitions favorable to violation of law over
definitions unfavorable to violation of 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 general
needs and values, because noncriminal behavior is an
expression of the same needs a values.
Criticisms of Differential Association
• Major criticisms have focused on the theories
testability, causal framework, and breadth.
– Concepts incorporated in the theory were vaguely and
imprecisely explained, leaving researchers to generate
their own operational definitions.
– Differential association presumes that definitions
acquired in association with others lead to behavioral
patterns.
– Differential association is so broad that, in attempting
to explain all criminal behavior, the theory succeeds in
explaining none.
• Testing Differential Association.
Ronald Akers - Social Learning Theory
• Expanded Sutherland’s Differential Association theory by adding
components of operant (voluntary response) and respondent
(involuntary response) conditioning.
• Identified four key elements that help shape behavior:
– Differential Associations - the learning of definitions favorable
or unfavorable to the law through processes of social
interaction.
– Definitions - apply to one’s own attitudes; including
orientations, rationalizations, definitions of the situation, and
other evaluative aspects of right and wrong.
– Differential Reinforcement - the actual or anticipated
consequences of engaging in specific behavior.
– Imitation
• Criticisms of Social Learning Theory
– The reinforcement proposition is tautological – which first?
– The temporal sequencing of peer association and delinquency
is poorly specified.
Techniques of Neutralization Gresham M. Sykes and David Matza
To allow violation of laws in which one
essentially believes, while preserving selfimage, neutralization must precede the
offense.
Sykes and Matza’s Techniques
of Neutralization
Technique
Definition
Denial of Responsibility
disclaiming person accountability for
law violation
claiming that the prohibited behavior
is absent the element of harm
transforming the victim of illegal
behavior into a justifiable target
denouncing the persons that allege
law violation
justifying law violation by conforming
to the moral demands of another
group affiliation
Denial of Injury
Denial of the Victim
Condemnation of the
Condemners
Appeal to Higher Loyalties
Culture Conflict and Crime
• Closely allied with versions of learning theory.
• Focuses on how members of a group are trained
through the learning process.
• Culture Conflict Theories locate the cause of
crime and delinquency in subcultural features.
• Views deviance as conformity to norms of a
subculture that runs counter to those of the
dominant group.
Thorsten Sellin Conflict of Conduct Norms
• Wrote Culture Conflict and Crime (1938)
• Argued that the task of criminology was to explain
violation of conduct norms.
• The catch-22 is that conformity to the norms of many
subcultures may contradict norms of the dominant culture,
placing members of those subcultures in the position of
violating the norms of some social group no matter how
the members conduct themselves.
– Primary Culture Conflict - the collision of norms from distinct
cultural systems.
– Secondary Culture Conflict - occurs with the evolution of
subcultures in a heterogenous society.
• Focused on immigration
Walter Miller Lower-Class Focal Concerns
• Focuses on features of lower-class culture.
• The stage is set for culture conflict because the norms
learned in lower-class settings depart from those of the
dominant middle-class culture.
Walter Miller’s Lower-Class Focal Concerns
Trouble -
Interference from official social control agents of the
dominant culture.
Toughness - Distorted image of masculinity.
Smartness - Skill and ability to dominate verbal exchanges pertinent
to the lower-class environment.
Excitement - Relieving the monotonous routine of lower-class
existence through emotion-arousing entertainment that
often violates norms of the dominant culture.
Fate Belief in little control over the forces shaping one’s
life.
Autonomy - Ambivalence regarding freedom from external control
reflected in overt resentment of control, but covert
pursuit of control.
Social Control and Crime
• Revolves around the process of socializing people.
• Rests on the premise that, if left alone, people will
pursue self-interests rather than those of society.
• Views crime as predictable behavior that society
has failed to bridle.
• Depicts choice as relevant to behavior.
• Value consensus lies at the basis of control theory.
Control Theories
• Containment Theory - Walter Reckless
– Very broad perspective that provides a general
framework for the control perspective.
– Criminogenic forces may be contained or
controlled by two mechanisms:
• Outer Containments - controls external to the
individual that take the form of social sanctions
• Inner Containments - self-control. Similar to
the concept of conscious and is facilitated by a
strong self-concept.
Travis Hirschi Social Bond Theory
• Assumes that “a person is free to commit delinquent
acts because his ties to the conventional order have
somehow been broken” (1969:3).
• Weakened or broken social bonds reduce a person’s
stakes in conformity.
• Four interrelated elements of the social bond:
– Attachment (most important)
– Commitment
– Involvement
– Belief
Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi A General Theory of Crime
• Rooted in low self-control, as opposed to
inadequate social controls.
• Crime is the result of individuals with low selfcontrol encountering situations or opportunities in
which crime will produce immediate gratification
with relatively low levels of risk.
• Argue that the cause of all crime is low-self
control and that this characteristic is stable across
the life course and set by age eight.
• Theory is rooted in the classical hedonistic view of
human nature.