Micro Level Theory Essay

619 Words2 Pages

Ajdin Osmanovic

Deviance, Crime and The Three Micro Level Theories
Deviance is a word that immediately conjures the negative. It even sounds like devious. Social deviance takes many different forms and is sometimes the best change agent for society. Deviance is any violations of norms, whether minor or serious. Deviance by society’s individuals threatens normalcy and predictability. “What is deviant to sum isn’t deviant to others”. For example a girl has a piercing on her tongue and got in school suspension for violating the schools dress code policy. Crime is a violation of the social norms that have been written into law. Every society has its own written laws, so the behaviors that are considered criminal depend on a society’s legal standards. The basic principles of differential theory are that criminal behavior is learned, learning is a byproduct of interaction, learning occurs within intimate groups, criminal techniques are learned, perceptions of legal code influences motives and drives, differential associations may vary in frequency, duration, priority and intensity, the process of learning criminal behavior by association with criminal with anti-criminal and criminal …show more content…

Sutherland's research was focused on white-collar crime, professional theft and intelligence and disputed the notion that crime was a function of people's inadequacy in the lower classes. He did not consider crime to stem from individual traits or from socioeconomic positions but to be a function of a learning process that could affect any individual regardless of culture. The acquisition of behavior is a social learning process rather than a political or legal process. Consequently the skills and motives that are conducive to crime are learned as a result of contact with pro-crime attitudes, values, definitions and other related pattern of criminal

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