Learning theory of offending behaviour

Differential association theory

• Sutherland (1939) described that criminal behaviour is learnt from the environment around an individual.
• Occurs by learning motivations, attitudes and drives of those engaging in criminal behaviour. Contact with lots of different messages encouraging offensive behavior- Sutherland named these messages 'favourable differentiations'.

Research & Evaluative points

• Matsueda (1988) stated that there was not enough research conducted on Differential association theory for it to be able to be an explanation for offending behaviour.

• Alarid et al…