Differential association theory (DAT) is the brainchild of Edwin Sutherland. What was his ambition for developing this? There are nine main points to this theory-briefly summarize at least three. Ans: Answer will come from the following:

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Differential association theory (DAT) is the brainchild of Edwin Sutherland, whose ambition was to devise a theory that could explain both individual criminality and aggregate crime rates by identifying conditions that must be present for crime to occur and that are absent when crime is absent. His theory attempted to explain more precise mechanisms by which factors such as social disorganization led to crime. Like Walter Miller (1958), Sutherland saw lower-class culture as having its own integrity and he disdained the phrase “social disorganization” as insulting, substituting “differential social organization.” Although Sutherland explicitly denied the role of psychology in crime and delinquency, his theory is implicitly psychological in that it focuses on the process of becoming delinquent via subjective definitions of reality and attitude formation. He laid out his theory in the form of the following nine propositions:
1. Criminal behavior is learned.
2. Criminal behavior is learned by 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 techniques of committing the crime, which are sometimes very complicated and sometimes simple, and the specific direction of motives, drives, rationalizations, and attitudes.
5. The specific direction of motives and drives is learned from definitions of the legal codes as favorable or unfavorable.
6. A person becomes delinquent because of an excess of definitions favorable to violation of the law over definitions unfavorable to violation of the law.
7. Differential associations may vary in frequency, duration, priority, and intensity.
8. The process of learning criminal behavior by association with criminal and anticriminal patterns involves all of the mechanisms that are involved in any other learning.
9. Although criminal behavior is an expression of general needs and values, it is not explained by those needs and values because noncriminal behavior is an expression of the same needs and values.