Sociological Explanations of Crime

With respect to crime, sociologists have pursued several lines of investigations. They have sought to determine the patterns of crime, that is, the manner in which criminal behavior is distributed along dimensions of time and space as well as social structure. They have endeavored to explain crime, determining the conditions that not only differentiate criminals from non-criminals but also account for the manner in which crime can be prevented. Following are the sociological explanation propounded by sociologists:

Sutherland's Theory of Differential Association

Sutherland propounded the Differential Association Theory in 1930. According to him two explanations have mainly been forwarded for criminal behavior. First is situational and second is the genetic or historical. The former explicate crime on the basis of situation that persists at the time of crime, and the latter explain crime on the basis of a criminals life experiences. He himself used the second approach in developing the theory of criminal behavior. Suppose a hungry boy comes across a shop and fids the shopkeeper absent. He steals a loaf of bread. In this case, it is not because the shopkeeper was absent and he was hungry that the boy committed the theft but it is because he had learnt earlier that one can satisfy his hunger by stealing things. Thus, it is not the situation which motivates a person to commit theft, it is his learnt attitudes and beliefs. Sutherland's main thesis is that individual encounter many inharmonious and inconsistent social influences in their life-time and many individuals become involved in contacts with carriers of criminalist norms, and as a consequence become criminals. He called this process ‘differential association'. The theory state that criminal behavior is a process of communication with other persons, principally is small, intimate groups. This learning includes the techniques of committing the crime. The specific direction of motives, drives, rationalizations and attitudes is learned from definitions of the legal codes as favourable or unfavourable. A person becomes criminal or delinquent because of an excess of definitions favourable to violation of law over definitions unfavourable to violations of law. This is the principle of differential association. Differential association may vary in frequency, duration, priority and intensity. The process of learning criminal behavior by associations with criminal and ant-criminal patterns involves all of the mechanisms that are involved in any other learning. While criminal behavior is an expression of general needs and values, it is not explained by those needs and values since non-criminal behavior is an expression of the same needs and values. But Sutherland's theory has been attacked by many scholars. The major criticism is that it is difficult to empirically test the principles and measure associations and priority, intensity, duration, and frequency of relationships. This theory fails to explain the origin of criminality, since criminality has to exist before it can be learnt from else. This theory was also criticized on the ground that it ignores the role of secondary contact and formal groups in criminality and does not fully explore the implications of the learning process itself as it affects different individuals.