Theories Of Differential Association Theory

The United States of America is a primary example of the idea that even the greatest things have their own flaws. The United States is known to be one of the most powerful and influential countries in the world. Yet as a nation we still have many of our own flaws. We are not the number one country in education or health. We don’t even provide all our citizens with health care coverage unlike many European countries such as Denmark. The one thing that we’re better at than other countries is putting people in prison. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. As of the year 2013, we had 2.2 million people in prison. Why is that? Why are people committing so much crime in the United States rather than in any other country?

This theory was based on multiple factors such as social class, age, race, and location, and how these factors influenced the amount of crime within a geographical location. In her Chancellor 's Scholars Council of Pembroke State University thesis, LEARNING TO BE DEVIANT: A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF DIFFERENTIAL ASSOCIATION, scholar Sandra K. Holland states, “Edwin H. Sutherland 's theory of Differential Association may be categorized as a learning theory. The basic premise is that criminal behavior is acquired through the learning process, just as is lawful behavior. The socialization process is essentially the same, regardless of whether the messages being transmitted are conformist or deviant. Through interaction with others, people learn attitudes both favorable and unfavorable to law violation. Sutherland claims that a person turns to criminal behavior when there is an excess of attitudes and values favoring law

In the same Chicago Tribune article titled, Higher Ambition - For One Former Gang Member, Road To Ordinary Goes Through Hbo, by Television Critic Steve Johnson, Greg Yance is quoted also stating, “You got Vice Lords on this side, Gangsters on that side, and Drug dealers on both sides.” In addition, in his Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology article, Application and Verification of the Differential Association Theory, criminologist and sociologist Donald R. Cressey states, “Persons acquire patterns of criminal behavior in the same way they acquire patterns of lawful behavior-through learning in interaction with other persons. The contents of the patterns presented in association with criminal behavior differ from the contents presented in association with lawful behavior, but the process is the same in both instances.” Based off both Greg and Cressey’s statements, Grey grew up in an environment with crime that lead him to join the Vice lord gang and start dealing drugs. He had no other choice and had to interact with the members of his community, which happened to be gang members and drug dealers. Also, in another one of Donald R. Cressey’s articles titled, Differential Association Theory and Compulsive Crimes, Cressey states, “It is argued by psychiatrists, then, that in cases of "compulsive crime" the actor does