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Crime is learned, like other behaviors
 One acquires habits and knowledge by interacting
with the environment
 Not instinctual or biological
Focus on content and process of learning
 What crimes can be learned? How?
 What behaviors that support crime can be learned?
 What in a culture supports this learning?
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
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Learning occurs in intimate social groups
Criminal behavior is learned from persons who
transmit ideas or “definitions” that promote law-breaking
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watc
Attitudes towards legal codes by a person’s social group
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are important
 “Normative conflict” – norms of group and society
may be in conflict
 “Definitions” – how members of a group look on legal
codes: are they to be observed, or not? Which laws can be violated? Why?
Content of learning
 Criminal techniques
 Underlying drives, rationalizations and attitudes
A person’s associations with criminal and non-criminal patterns of thought and
conduct differ in frequency, duration, priority and intensity
 Delinquency is caused by an excess of definitions favorable to lawbreaking
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Criticisms
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It focuses on juvenile crime committed in groups
▪ Perhaps delinquents simply “flock together”
▪ Not all who associate with delinquents become delinquent
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Hard to test: How can we identify and count the definitions favorable and
unfavorable to lawbreaking in each setting?
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Cannot apply to all kinds of crime
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Difficult to use to explain differences in crime rates in different places and
between different demographic groups
Defenses
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Strength, intensity of associations vary
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It includes a cognitive (active processing) component in learning
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Those with more delinquent friends do commit more crimes
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Those with more definitions favoring lawbreaking commit more crime
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Behaviors can be learned as well as ideas
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Differential association – Behaviors can be learned socially, from others and
from “reference groups” whose definitions are favorable or unfavorable to
lawbreaking
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Differential reinforcement – Behaviors can be learned socially and non-socially,
according to their actual or anticipated consequences
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Learned socially through approval/disapproval by others
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Learned non-socially (e.g., getting sick/high on drugs)
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Learned vicariously by observing consequences of behavior for others
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Once criminal behavior begins, it continues if reinforced either socially or nonsocially
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Structural conditions (inequality, strain) affect a person’s differential
associations, definitions, models and reinforcements
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How persons become violent criminals
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Based on Athens’ observations growing up in a violent environment
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Theory developed through in-depth interviews with 58 prisoners
Four stages
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Brutalization - victim of intra-familial violence, coached in violence
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Belligerence - person decides to stop being the victim and take charge of their
situation
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Violent performances - person experiments with violence
▪ Failures may lead to exit from violence
▪ Successes may lead to more violence & acquiring weapons
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Virulency - person treated differently by others, embraces image
▪ Sees violence as best response to many situations
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Lower and middle-class cultures are distinct
Middle-class emphasizes achievement
Lower-class has different concerns, which are a
http://youtu.be/eUgDbCZLPpY
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
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Violence is a cultural expression for lower
socioeconomic status males
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Many homicides result from very trivial events
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Defending honor of relatives, neighborhood
Significance of an event (e.g., a jostle) is differentially perceived by races and
socioeconomic classes
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Persons who respond as socially expected are admired – those who do not
are put down
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Causes of “passion” behavior are ideas – norms, values, expectations – that
originate in social conditions
Don’t focus on the origin of a subculture
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Worry instead about the ideas it generates
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Remedy is to disperse and assimilate the
subcultures
New York Times: Gunfire Still Rules the Night
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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
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
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How do people “learn” to commit crime?
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Sutherland: Crime is behavior that flows naturally from ideas and beliefs
learned by associating with others
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Akers and Athens basically agree, but extend the learning process to
incorporate other factors, such as reinforcement and exposure to violence
If crime is a normal learned behavior, how society is structured and organized
are important
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Critical criminology: Those who set and define the rules and values get to
define crime
Social structure  behavior
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Learning theories (Matsueda): Social structure counts, but culturallydefined ideas and beliefs are a more proximate cause of crime
Social structure  culture/subculture  behavior