TBEET
Differential Association*
Edwin 11. Sutherland
The scientific explanation of a phenomenon may be stated either in terms of the factors which are operating at the moment of the occurrence of a phenomenon or in terms of the processes operating in the earlier history of that phenomenon. In the first case the explanation is mechanistic, in the second historical or genetic; both are desirable. The physical and biological scientists favor the first of these methods and it would probably be superior as on explanation of criminal behavior. Efforts at explanations of the mechanistic type have been notably unsuccessful, perhaps largely because they have been concentrated on the attempt to isolate personal and social pathologies. Work from this point of vie w has, at least, resulted in the conclusion that the immediate factors in criminal behavior lie in the person-situation complex. Person and situation are not factors exclusive of each other, for the situation which is important is the situation as defined by the person who is involved. The tendencies and inhibitions at the moment of the criminal behavior are, to be sure, largely a product of the earlier history of the person, but the expression of these tendencies and inhibitions is a reaction to the immediate situation as defined by the person. The situation operates in many ways, of which perhaps the least important is the provision of an opportunity for a criminal act. A thief may steal from a fruit stand when the owner is not in sight but refrain when the owner is in sight; a bank burglar may attack a bank which is poorly protected but refrain from attacking a bank protected by watchmen and burglar alarms. A corporation which manufactures automobiles seldom or never violates the Pure Food and Drug Law but a meat-packing corporation violates this law with great frequency.
•Selections from Principles of Criminology by Edwin H. Sutherland. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincatt Co.), 1947, pp. 5-9
The second type of explanation of criminal behavior is made in terms of the life experience of a person. This is an historical or genetic explanation of criminal behavior. This, to be sure, assumes a situation to be defined by the person in terms of the inclinations and abilities which the person has acquired up to that date. The fallowing paragraphs state such a genetic theory of criminal behavior Dn the assumption that a criminal act occurs when a situation appropriate for it, as defined by a person, is present.
GENETIC EXPLANATION OF CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR
The following statement refers to the process by which a particular person comes to engage in criminal behavior.
1. Criminai behavior it learned. Negatively, this. means that criminal behavior is not inherited, as such; also, the person who is not already trained in . crime does not invent criminal behavior, just as a person does not make mechanical inventions unless he has had training in mechanics.
2. Criminal behavior is learned in interaction with other persons in a process of communication. Tins communication is verbal in many respects but in eludes also "the communication of gestures."
3. The principal part of the learning of criminal be-havior occurs within intimate personal groups. Negatively, this means that the impersonal ngen-,-cies of communication, such as picture shows and newspapers, play a relatively unimportant part in the genesis of criminal behavior.
4. Wlien criminal behavior is learned, the learning includes (a) techniques of committing the crime, which are sometimes very complicated, sometimes very simple; (bj the specific direction of motivts, drives, rationalizations, and attitudes.
5. The specific direction of motives and drives it learned from definitions of the legal cades asfi vorable or unfavorable. In some societies an individual is surrounded by persons who invariably define the legal codes as rules to be observed, while
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in others he is surrounded by persons whose definitions are favorable to the violation of the legal codes. In our American society these definitions are almost always mixed and consequently we have culture conflict in relation to the legal codes. A person becomes delinquent because of an excess of definitions favorable to violation of law over definitions unfavorable to violation of law. This is the principle of differential association. It refers to both criminal and anti-crimina! associations and has to do with counteracting forces. When persons became criminal, they do so because of contacts with criminal patterns and also because of isolation from anti-criminal patterns. Any person inevitably assimilates the surrounding culture unless other patterns are in conflict; a Southerner does not pronounce "r" because other Southerners do not pronounce "r." Negatively, this proposition of differential association means thai associations which are neutral so far as crime is concerned have little or nD effect on the genesis of criminal behavior. Much of the experience of a person is neutral in this sense, e.g., learning to brush one's teeth. This behavior has no negative or positive effect on criminal behavior except as it may be related to associations which are concerned with the legal codes. This neutral behavior is important especially as an occupier of the time of a child so that he is not in ■ contact with criminal behavior during the time he is
so engaged in the neutral behavior. 7. Differential associations may vary in frequency, duration, priority, and intensity. This means that associations with criminal behavior and also associations with anti-criminal behavior vary in those respects. "Frequency" and "duration" as modalities of associations are obvious and need no explanation. "Priority" is assumed to be important in the - sense that lawful behavior developed in early childhood may persist throughout life, and also that delinquent behavior developed in early childhood may persist throughout life. This tendency, however, has not been adequately demonstrated, and
■. priority seems to be important principally through its selective influence. "Intensity" is not precisely defined but it has to do with such things as the prestige of the source of a criminal or anti-criminal pattern and with emotional reactions related to the associations, hi a precise description of the criminal
_ behavior of a person these modalities would be stated in quantitative form and a mathematical ratio be reached. A formula in mis sense has not been developed and the development of such a formula would be extremely difficult
8. The process of learning criminal behavior by association with criminal and anti-criminal patterns involves all of the mechanisms tliat are involved in any other learning. Negatively, this means that the learning of criminal behavior is not restricted to the process of imitation. A person who is seduced, for instance, leams criminal behavior by association but this process would not ordinarily be described as imitation,
9. While criminal behavior is an expression of general needs and values, it is not explained by those genera! needs and values since non-criminal beltavior is an expression of tlie same needs and values. Thieves generally steal in order to secure money, but likewise honest laborers work in order to secure money. The attempts by many scholars to explain criminal behavior by general drives and values, such as the happiness principle, striving forsocial status, the money motive, or frustration, have been and must continue to be futile since they explain lawful behavior as completely as they explain criminal behavior. They are similar to respiration, which is necessary for any behavior but which does not differentiate criminal from non-criminal behavior.
It is not necessary, at this level of explanation, to explain why a person has the associations which he has; this certainly involves a complex of many things. In an area where the delinquency rate is high a boy who is sociable, gregarious, active, and athletic is very likely to come in contact with the other boys in the neighborhood, leam delinquent behavior from them, and become a gangster; in the same neighborhood the psychopathic boy who is isolated, introvert, and inert may remain at home, not become acquainted with the other boys in the neighborhood, and not become delinquent. In another situation, the sociable, athletic, aggressive boy may become a member of a scout troop and not become involved in delinquent behavior. The person's associations are determined in a genera) context of social organization. A child is ordinarily reared in a family; the place of residence of the family is determined largely by family income; and the delinquency rate is in many respects related to the rental value of the houses. Many other factors enter into this social organization, including many of the small personal group relationships.
The preceding explanation of criminal behavior was suited from the point of view of the person
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who engages in criminal behavior. It is possible, also, to state theories of criminal behavior from the point of view of the community, nation, or other group. The problem, when thus stated, is generally concerned with crime rates and involves a comparison of the crime rates of various groups or the crime rates of a particular group at different times. One of the best explanations of crime rates from this point of view is that a high crime rate is due to social disorganization. The term "social disorganization" is not entirely satisfactory and it seems preferable to substitute for it the term "differential social organization." The postulate on which this theory is based, regardless of the name, is that
crime is rooted in the social organization and is an expression of that social organization. A group may be organized for criminal behavior or organized against criminal behavior. Most communities are organized both for criminal and anti-crim-inal behavior and in that sense the crime rate is an expression of the differential group organization. Differential group organization as an explanation of a crime rate must be consistent with the explanation of the criminal behavior of the person, since the crime rale is n summary statement of the number of persons in the group who commit crimes and the frequency with which they commit crimes.
Differential Identification*
Daniel Glaser
We described identification somewhat unconventionally as "the choice of another, from whose perspective we view our own behavior."vWhat we have called "differential identification" reconcep-tualizes Sutherland's theory in role-taking irn-agery, drawing heavily Dn Mead as well as on lateK refinements of role theory."1 Most persons in our society are believed to identify themselves with both criminal and non-criminal persons in the course of their lives. Criminal identification may occur, for example, during direct experience in delinquent membership groups, through positive reference to criminal roles portrayed in mass media, or as a negative reaction to forces opposed to crime. The family probably is the principal noncriminal reference group, even for criminals. It is supplemented by many other groups of anti-criminal "generalized others."
•"Criminality Theories and Behavioral Images" by Daniel Glaser. The American Journal of Sociology, 61 (March, 1956), pp. 440-441. Reprinted by permission of the author and the University of Chicago Press.
The theory of differential identification, in essence, is that a person pursues criminal behavior to the extent that he identifies himself with real or imaginary persons from whose perspective his criminal behavior seems acceptable. Such a theory focuses attention on the interaction in which choice of models occurs, including the individual's interaction with himself in^-rationalizing his conduct. This focus makes differential identification theory integrative, in that lb-provides a criterion of the relevance, for each individual case of criminality, of economic conditions^rior frustrations, learned moral creeds, group participation, or other features of an individual's lifevThese features are relevant to the extent that they^an be shown to affect the choice of the other frorrtxwhose perspective the individual views his own behavior. The explanation of criminal behavior on^the basis of its imperfect correlation with any single variable of life-situations, if presented without' specifying (he intervening identification, evokes only a disconnected image of the relationship between the life-situation and the crirninal behavior.
Sutherland supported the differential association theory by evidence that a major portion of criminality is learned through participation in criminal groups. Differential identification is a less disconnected explanation for such learning, and it also does not seem vulnerable to most of the objections to differential association. Because opposing and divisive roles frequently develop within groups, because our identification may be with remote reference groups or with imaginary or highly generalized others, and because identifications may shift rapidly with dialectical processes of role change and rationalization during social interaction, differential association, as ordinarily conceived, is insufficient to account for all differential identification.
In practice, the use of differential identification to explain lone crimes where the source of learning is not readily apparent (such as extremes of brutality or other abnormality in sex crimes) gives rise to speculation as to the "others" involved in the identification. The use of this theory to explain a gang member's participation in a professional crime against property presents fewer difficulties. In so far as the former types of offense are explained by psychiatrists without invoking instincts or other mystical forces, they usually are interpreted, on a necessarily speculative basis, in terms of the self-conception which the offender develops in supporting his behavior and the sources of that, self-conception. Such differential identification, in the case of most unusual and compulsive crimes, offers a less disconnected explanation than explanations derived from the alternative theories.2
The one objection to the theory of differential association which cannot be met by differential identification is that it does not account for "accidental" crimes. Differential identification treats crime as a form of voluntary (i.e., anticipatory) behavior, rather than as an accident. Indeed, both legal and popular conceptions of "crime" exclude acts which are purely accidental, except for some legislation on felonious negligence, to which our discussion of criminality must be considered inapplicable. Even for the latter offenses, however, ''Sf is noteworthy that the consequences of accidentally committing a crime may be such as to
foster identification with criminal-role models (whether one is apprehended for the accidental crime or not).
During any period, prior identifications and present circumstances dictate the selection of the persons with whom we identify ourselves. Prior identifications which have been pleasing tend to persist, but at any time the immediate circumstances affect the relative ease (or salience) of alternative identifications. That is why membership groups so frequently are the reference groups, although they need not be. That, too, is why those inclined to crime usually refrain from it in situations where they play satisfying conventional roles in which crime would threaten their acceptance. From the latter situations their identification with non-criminal others may eventually make them anticriminal. This is the essence of rehabilitation.3
There is evidence that, with the spread of urban secularism, social situations are becoming more and more deliberately rather than traditionally organized. Concurrently, roles are increasingly adjusted on the basis of the apparent authority or social pressure in each situation.4 Our culture is said to give a common level of aspiration but different capacities of attainment according to socioeconomic class. At the same time, it is suggested, economic sources of status are becoming stronger while non-economic sources are becoming weaker. Therefore, when conventional occupational avenues of upward mobility are denied, people ore more and more willing to seek the economic gains anticipated in crime, even at the risk of losing such non-economic sources of status as acceptance by non-criminal groups.3 All these alleged features of urbanism suggest a considerable applicability of differential identification to "situational" and "incidental" crimes; focus on differential identification with alternative reference groups may reveal "situational imperatives" in individual life-histories.
Differential identification may be considered tautological, in that it may seem merely to make "crime" synonymous with "crirninal identification." It is more than a tautology, however, if it directs one to observations beyond those necessary merely for the classification of behavior as
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