Social Process Theories of Crime

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Social Process Theories of Crime

• Chapter 8

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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

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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.

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Edwin H. Sutherland - Differential Association

• Theories thought to have substantial influence on
  Sutherlands 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

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Sutherlands Nine Principlesof 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.

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Sutherlands Nine Principlesof 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.

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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.

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Ronald Akers - Social Learning Theory

• Expanded Sutherlands 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 ones 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.

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• Techniques of Neutralization -
• Gresham M. Sykes and David Matza
• To allow violation of laws in which one
  essentially believes, while preserving
  self-image, neutralization must precede the
  offense.

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Sykes and Matzas Techniquesof Neutralization

• Technique Definition
• Denial of Responsibility disclaiming person
  accountability for
• law violation
• Denial of Injury claiming that the prohibited
  behavior
• is absent the element of harm
• Denial of the Victim transforming the victim of
  illegal
• behavior into a justifiable target
• Condemnation of the denouncing the persons that
  allege Condemners law violation
• Appeal to Higher Loyalties justifying law
  violation by conforming
• to the moral demands of another
• group affiliation

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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.

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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

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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.

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Walter Millers 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 ones life.
• Autonomy - Ambivalence regarding freedom from
  external control reflected in overt resentment
  of control, but covert pursuit of control.

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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.

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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.

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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
  (19693).
• Weakened or broken social bonds reduce a persons
  stakes in conformity.
• Four interrelated elements of the social bond
• Attachment (most important)
• Commitment
• Involvement
• Belief

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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
  self-control 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.