Criminological learning theories

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Criminological learning theories are based on the assumption that behavior patterns that deviate from the norm are learned as well as conforming behavior. All attitudes , values , motives and behavioral techniques would be adopted by other members of society in the process of communication and then practiced. The decisive factors are the people whose behavior is being imitated and the social environment in which these learning processes take place. Criminological learning theories are in contrast to older, biological assumptions, according to which crime is genetically determined.

With the exception of the early publications of the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde , all criminological learning theories were drafted by researchers from the United States . Edwin H. Sutherland created the basis in 1947 with his theory of differential association . All approaches conceived later are additions and modifications of this theory. Sutherland explained the emergence of crime, similar to Tarde, with the learning processes that result from the options for interpersonal contacts. Daniel Glaser added the aspect of identification to the theory . With their theory of neutralization, Gresham M. Sykes and David Matza investigated the question of what needs to be learned so that people can commit crimes. Ronald L. Akers finally linked Sutherland's theory with social-cognitive learning theory and thus made criminological learning theory empirically verifiable.

Gabriel Tarde - the forerunner

Gabriel Tarde

The criminological learning theories published from the middle of the 20th century continue what the French sociologist and criminologist Gabriel Tarde had already postulated at the end of the 19th century. Tarde's theory of criminal occupation and of criminal imitation states: Crime is a craft and a profession. The professional criminal is trained in special techniques after a long apprenticeship. He has a technical language and behaves according to a certain code of conduct towards his fellow criminals . The powerful, unconscious and mysterious driving force that explains all phenomena of society, including crime, is imitation, by virtue of which the thought is transmitted from one brain to another. The closer contact people have, the more effective the imitation is. Finding that a criminal only repeats what others have shown him to do, Tarde concluded that everyone was guilty, except the criminal.

Differential Association Theory (Sutherland)

The differential association theory was formulated in 1939 by Edwin H. Sutherland under the influence of his own work on the professional thief. Together with his student Donald R. Cressey , he developed it further, and it was finalized in 1947 in the 4th edition of his criminology textbook. A German translation was published in 1968 by Fritz Sack and René König , whereby the term association was replaced by contacts .

Theoretical statements

Sutherland formulates the central statements of his theory in nine partially overlapping theses.

  1. “Criminal behavior is learned behavior.” In negative terms, this means that criminal behavior is not inherited. Nor can a person who has not already had criminal training invent criminal behavior.
  2. "Criminal behavior is learned in interaction with other people in a communication process." Such communication is mostly verbal, but also includes communication through gestures .
  3. “Criminal behavior is mainly learned in intimate personal groups.” This means that impersonal means of communication such as films and newspapers play a subordinate role in the development of criminal behavior.
  4. "Learning criminal behavior includes learning a) the techniques for carrying out the crime, which are sometimes very complicated, sometimes very simple, b) the specific direction of motives, drives, rationalizations and attitudes."
  5. “The specific direction of drives and motives is learned by defining laws positively or negatively.” In some societies, an individual only lives with people who obey legal regulations. In other societies, people live with people whose attitudes favor a violation of the law. In American culture, positive and negative interpretations of legal regulations almost always come together. As a result, there are cultural conflicts.
  6. "A person becomes delinquent as a result of the preponderance of attitudes that favor the violation over those who judge the violation of the law negatively." That is the principle of differential contacts . It refers to criminal as well as anti-criminal contacts and concerns the clash of opposing forces.
  7. "Differential contacts vary according to frequency, duration, priority and intensity." Frequency and duration as properties of contacts need no explanation. Priority is important because law-abiding as well as delinquent behavior that developed in early childhood can continue throughout life.
  8. “The process in which criminal behavior is learned through contact with criminal and anti-criminal behavior patterns includes all mechanisms that are involved in any other learning process.” This means that the mechanisms of learning criminal behavior are not limited to imitation .
  9. “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.” Thieves would generally have the same goal of stealing to make money but also honorable workers.

Sutherland did not need to explain in the context of his theory why a person has the contacts they have. Such a declaration would contain many complex facts. He mentions as an example: In an area with a high delinquency rate, a casual, sociable, active and strong boy would very likely come into contact with the other boys in the neighborhood, learn delinquent behavior from them and become a gangster . In the same neighborhood, a psychopathic boy who is isolated, withdrawn, and indolent would stay at home, would not come into contact with the other boys in the neighborhood, and would not become delinquent. In another situation, the sociable, strong and aggressive boy would become a member of a Boy Scout group and not become involved in delinquent behavior. A person's contacts and thus their tendency to delinquency are determined by the general social context.

Criminological reception and criminal policy implications

As a representative of the so-called labeling approach, Fritz Sack emphasizes the “monstrous” message of the theory for the criminology of the time: One is not a criminal, one becomes him. One has to learn crime just as much as a respectable profession. With this, Sutherland opened the door to a criminology that is no longer fixated on attributes of the perpetrator personality.

Because Sutherland does not provide any precise information about how contacts that promote crime must be constituted in order to prevail against contacts that promote conforming behavior, his theory can hardly be empirically verified. According to Karl-Ludwig Kunz and Tobias Singelnstein , the theory does not provide a comprehensive explanation of crime. It does not explain why people have certain contacts and why people with criminal contacts sometimes don't become criminals. It is also not applicable to all forms of crime (such as acts of affect and instinct) and neglects the influence of the media. For Bernd-Dieter Meier , the most important objection that can be raised against the theory today is that it lacks any reference to the principles of general learning theory.

The criminal policy implications are clear: The theory of differential associations stands for a re- socializing criminal law, because if criminal attitudes and activities are learned, they can be forgotten again. To do this, the aim must be to surround criminals with non-criminals, i.e. to dissolve social spaces in which predominantly deviant people live.

Differential Identification Theory (Glaser)

With his theory of differential identification, Daniel Glaser supplemented Sutherland's theory of differential association in 1956 , which he believes is not complex enough to explain all types of delinquency . Contact with criminals alone is not sufficient, otherwise police officers and law enforcement officers, who are confronted with criminals and their behavior on a daily basis, would have to become criminals. Identification must be added to the contact .

Identification is understood as the voluntary choice of another person from whose perspective one's own behavior is observed. Glaser's theoretical statement is in a nutshell: If there are people who approve or even demand deviant behavior and if identification with such people, be they real or just imagined, takes place, then those who identify themselves behave criminally.

The theory of differential identification differs substantially little from Sutherland's theory. An important difference, however, is that it gives media-mediated criminal roles a similar importance as personal contact.

Neutralization Theory (Sykes and Matza)

In 1957 Gresham M. Sykes and David Matza published the neutralization theory, a further development of the Sutherland theory. Her approach addresses the question of what needs to be learned in order to commit crimes. A German translation was published in 1968 by Fritz Sack and René König .

Theoretical statements

The starting point is the idea that criminals generally recognize social values ​​and norms as valid. This leads to the question of which psychological mechanisms enable the perpetrators to disregard the legal norms in concrete factual situations. Sykes and Matza name five neutralization techniques that enable the delinquent to violate legal norms. In agreement with Sutherland, they assume that these techniques must be learned through contact with others. The five arguments are:

  • Rejection of responsibility (Denial of Responsibility) : The delinquent behavior is attributed to causes that can not be influenced by the offender. As a result, he is not responsible for his actions and justifies it with, for example, the influence of wrong friends or that of an unfavorable residential area.
  • Denial of injustice (Denial of Injury) : The delinquent behavior is recognized as a standard hurtful, but not seen as immoral. The perpetrator claims that he did not cause any major damage or specifically harm anyone (for example in the case of traffic offenses , damage to property or insurance fraud).
  • Devaluation of the victim (Denial of Victim) : The perpetrator makes himself a morally superior punisher. Although he takes responsibility for his crime, he demeans the victim ( victim devaluation ). The victim is made the wrongdoer , someone who deserves exactly that treatment (this is common to sex offenders in prison ).
  • Condemnation of the damning (Condemnation of the condemners) : The delinquent shifts attention from himself and his offense to those who condemn his act, and subordinated them reprehensible motives (such as personal dislike against the perpetrator or the population group from which it originated) .
  • Citing higher authorities (Appeal to Higher Loyalties) : The offenders relies on not from self-interest to have acted, but for the important aspects of an important group (also applies to politically motivated crimes ).

Criminological reception and criminal policy implications

Frank Neubacher and Michael Bock see the strength of the theory in the fact that it can also explain the criminality of socially adapted and integrated people who were not exposed to any significant development risks. The theory is not aimed at the lower social classes , but finds rich illustrative material in the economic crime and the crime of the powerful .

Although Bernd-Dieter Meier does not consider the neutralization theory to be a real theory of crime, because Sykes and Matza do not deal with the question of how the perpetrator even comes to wanting to commit a crime, he regards it as practically important for the perpetrator-victim balance . Against the background of his devaluation of the victim , the perpetrator is required to deal with the victim's suffering that has actually been caused.

Social Learning Theory (Akers)

In his social learning theory led Ronald L. Akers 1973 Sutherland's theory of differential association and the social cognitive theory of Albert Bandura together. Before Akers added the aspect of model learning to the theory, a preparatory work he wrote together with Robert L. Burgess in 1966 was called the theory of differential amplification . In this work, the aspect of strengthening older learning theories was only emphasized.

Theoretical statements

Akers presents his central assumptions in four concepts. In principle, all four concepts work in all groups with which the actor has contact.

  • As with Sutherland, the concept of differential association refers to the processes with which the actors come into contact with other people and thus also with different definitions, attitudes and values.
  • The Differential gain is reflected in the consequences of an action, perceived by the player in the form of rewards or punishments. If positive reinforcement is experienced or observed, the likelihood of an action being carried out or repeated increases. In contrast, negative reinforcement tends to reduce the frequency of behavior.
  • The concept of imitation means the observation of the behavior of other people and its consequences in terms of model learning. Imitation opens up previously unknown behavioral options to actors, which is important for explaining the first delinquency.
  • In the sense of theory, definitions are the opinions and attitudes a person has about their behavior. They are learned through differential reinforcement and imitation . A distinction is made between general and specific definitions. General definitions are to be understood as moral, religious and other conventional values ​​which are conducive to behavior that is true to the norm. Specific definitions relate to individual behaviors. The theory further distinguishes between definitions that justify criminal behavior and those that disapprove of it.

The four concepts work together in such a way that definitions are offered in social contexts and various behaviors are presented that can be imitated and rewarded or sanctioned by the group through respective reinforcers.

Criminological reception and criminal policy implications

The social learning theory is the most influential development of Sutherland approach. It has been widely reviewed and has proven to be the crime-sociological theory that has received the most empirical support.

The criminal policy implications correspond to those of the Sutherland theory (re-socializing criminal law and the dissolution of social spaces in which mainly deviant people live), but there are two important aspects. First, criminal acts must have such negative consequences that they outweigh the positive consequences. Conversely, compliant actions must be rewarded in such a way that their negative consequences are irrelevant. Second, the influence of mass media on individual behavior must be taken into account and reduced through state intervention.

literature

Primary literature

Secondary literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dieter Herrmann : Theories of crime . Keyword in the online dictionary. In: Thomas Feltes , Hans-Jürgen Kerner (Ed.): KrimLex . ( krimlex.de [accessed on July 15, 2020]).
  2. ↑ Hans Joachim Schneider : Kriminologie , De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2014, p. 317.
  3. ↑ Bernd-Dieter Meier : Criminology . 5th edition, CH Beck, Munich 2016, pp. 18 and 61.
  4. ^ Edwin H. Sutherland : The Professional Thief . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1937.
  5. ^ Karl-Ludwig Kunz and Tobias Singelnstein : Criminology. A foundation . 7th, fundamentally revised edition, Haupt, Bern 2016, p. 119.
  6. ↑ Edwin H. Sutherland: Principles of criminology . 4th Edition, JB Lippincott Co., Chicago 1947, pp. 5-9.
  7. ↑ Edwin H. Sutherland, The theory of differential contacts . In: Fritz Sack and René König (eds.), Kriminalsoziologie . Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main 1968, pp. 395–399 (Translator Karl-Dieter Opp ).
  8. ↑ The presentation of the theory follows Edwin H. Sutherland, The theory of differential contacts . In: Fritz Sack and René König (eds.), Kriminalsoziologie . 3rd edition, Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, Wiesbaden 1979, pp. 395–399; the key statements of the nine theses are quoted directly.
  9. ↑ Fritz Sack, Theories of Crime, Sociological . In: Ders., Güther Kaiser , Hans-Jürgen Kerner , Hartmut Schellhoss Small Criminological Dictionary . 3rd edition, CF Müller, Heidelberg 1993, pp. 267-280, here p. 277.
  10. ^ Karl-Dieter Opp : Deviant behavior and social structure . Luchterhand, Neuwied 1974, p. 170.
  11. ^ Karl-Ludwig Kunz and Tobias Singelnstein: Criminology. A foundation . 7th, fundamentally revised edition, Haupt, Bern 2016, p. 119 f.
  12. ↑ Bernd-Dieter Meier: Criminology . 5th edition, CH Beck, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-406-69580-3 , p. 62
  13. ↑ Christian Wickert: Theory of differential contacts (Sutherland) , SozTheo.
  14. ^ Daniel Glaser : Criminality Theories and Behavioral Images . In: American Journal of Sociology , Volume 61, 5/1956, pp. 433-444, doi : 10.1086 / 221802 , JSTOR 2773486 .
  15. ^ Rebecca Ziegler: Social class and crime . Lit, Berlin / Münster 2009, p. 142.
  16. ↑ Information in this section is based, unless otherwise indicated, on: Siegfried Lamnek , Theories of deviating behavior I - “Classical approaches” . 10th edition, Wilhelm Fink (UTB), Paderborn 2019, p. 213 f.
  17. ^ Rebecca Ziegler: Social class and crime . Lit, Berlin / Münster 2009, p. 144.
  18. ↑ Gresham M. Sykes and David Matza , Techniques of Neutralization: A Theory of Delinquency . In: American Sociological Review , Volume 22, 5/1958, 22, pp. 664-670, JSTOR 2089195 .
  19. ↑ Gresham M. Sykes and David Matza, Techniques of Neutralization. A theory of delinquency . In: Fritz Sack and René König (eds.), Kriminalsoziologie . Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main 1968, pp. 360–371 (Translator Karl-Dieter Opp).
  20. ↑ Bernd-Dieter Meier : Criminology . 5th edition, CH Beck, Munich 2016, p. 63.
  21. ↑ The presentation of the five neutralization techniques follows Gresham M. Sykes and David Matza, Techniques of Neutralization. A theory of delinquency . In: Fritz Sack and René König (eds.), Kriminalsoziologie . 3rd edition, Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, Wiesbaden 1979, p. 366 ff.
  22. ^ Frank Neubacher : Criminology . 3rd edition, Nomos-Verlag, Baden-Baden 2017, p. 98.
  23. ↑ Michael Bock: Criminology. For study and practice. 4th edition, Franz Vahlen, Munich 2013, p. 62.
  24. ↑ Bernd-Dieter Meier: Criminology . 5th edition, CH Beck, Munich 2016, p. 64.
  25. ↑ Ronald L. Akers : Deviant behavior. A social learning approach. Wadsworth Pub. Co., Belmont (California), ISBN 0-534-00234-X .
  26. ↑ The presentation of the theory is based on: Michael Bock , Kriminologie. For study and practice. 4th edition, Franz Vahlen, Munich 2013, p. 54 ff.
  27. ↑ Ronald L. Akers and Robert L. Burgess (1966): A Differential Association-Reinforcement Theory of Criminal Behavior. In: Social Problems, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 128-147. 1966.
  28. ↑ Stefanie Eifler : Kriminalsoziologie ., Transcript-Verlag, Bielefeld 2002, p. 42 f.
  29. ↑ Michael Bock: Criminology. For study and practice. 4th edition, Franz Vahlen, Munich 2013, p. 57.
  30. ↑ Christian Wickert: Theory of social learning (Akers) , SozTheo.
This article was added to the list of articles worth reading on March 28, 2018 in this version .