Social Psychological Explanations of Criminal Behaviour:

Differential Association:

This theory looks at how criminal behaviour is entirely due to learning and how people around you influence your behaviours. Social learning refers to learning from others through observation and imitations. If people are socialiased into crime, then they won't understand that what they are doing is wrong. Differential association is when people vary in the frequency with which they associate with others who have more or less favourable attitudes to crime. This links to criminal behaviour as if the local community wholely supports crime, the crime rates will be higher due to differential association. 

Sutherland (1939) suggested that offending behaviour can be explained in terms of social learning. He believed he could devise a mathematical formula to…