Criminological Theories: Strengths, Weaknesses, and Applications

Posted on Oct 8, 2024 in Psychology and Sociology

Criminological Theories: Strengths & Weaknesses

Criminal behavior is learned.
Criminal behavior is learned in interaction with other persons in a process of communication. The principal part of the learning of criminal behavior occurs within intimate personal groups.
When criminal behavior is learned, the learning includes:
- a) techniques of committing the crime, which are sometimes very complicated and sometimes very simple,
- b) the specific directions, motives, drives, rationalizations, and attitudes. The specific direction of motives and drives is learned from definitions of legal codes as favorable or unfavorable.
A person becomes delinquent because of an excess of definitions favorable to violation of law over definitions unfavorable to violation of law.
The process of learning criminal behavior by association with criminal and anti-criminal patterns incorporates all the mechanisms that are involved in any other learning.
Although criminal behavior is an expression of general needs and values, it is not explained by those general needs and values since non-criminal behavior is an expression of the same needs and values.

Good for explaining the occurrence of delinquency and crime within groups for juveniles.
- One of the strongest predictors of a juvenile’s own delinquency is the delinquency of their friends.
- “The best predictor of the extent of an adolescent’s involvement in delinquent behavior is…the number of delinquent youth associations.”

Difficult to test. How accurate are the measures for “definitions favorable to law violation?”
The importance of delinquent associations does not necessarily support differential association.
- Why?
- Chicken and the egg – what comes first? Delinquent peers (supports D.A.) or delinquent individual that then looks for delinquent peers to hang out with (does not support D.A.)
What about television, movies, and pop culture?
- Some argue that for crimes like sexual violence against women, some men learn strategies and techniques of neutralization from society itself and not just other individuals.

Attachment – whether or not a bond exists
Commitment – how committed a person is to a social institution
Involvement – how involved a person is in a social institution
Belief – does a person firmly believe in the institution and its rules and feel that they are fair.

Is well supported by many studies. Research shows crime and delinquency is related to an individual’s connection to:
- Their parents
- School
- Work

Are social institutions always normative (positive) for socialization?
Are there examples of when a social bond to a social institution would result in criminal behavior?
- Is American corporate culture inherently deviant?
- Remember Differential Association? The more likely an individual identifies their peer group as their primary social group, the more likely they are to engage in delinquency.

A state of normative confusion (either for societies or individuals)
Where clear understandings of what is right and wrong become muddled and confused.

Two parts to all societies:
- Cultural structure – goals or the kinds of things that are valued and strived for in society
- Social structure – means by which social goals or the cultural structure can be achieved.

Good at explaining why disadvantaged groups commit crime.
Some evidence for the idea that stress and strain lead to crime for some groups.
Explains why someone who loses his/her job turns to drug dealing.
Also connects individual decisions to very broad social forces.
Societal level forces (macro) can cause individuals to commit crime (micro).
Also introduced a typology of deviance that included behaviors such as drug addiction and homelessness.

Categories of adaptation not that accurate and tendency to oversimplify.
Why isn’t there a stronger connection between unemployment and poverty and crime?
High status offending?
Retreatists?
American culture?