CRIM 2650 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Juvenile Delinquency, Social Control Theory, Mental Disorder
13 Aug 2016
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They sought to clarify sutherland"s theories, in which he argued that criminal behaviour is learned, similar to other kinds of behaviour (using the same social and psychological processes that are used for learning other sorts of behaviour) Thus, the difference between criminals and non-criminals lies in the content they learn. Differential association theory: assumes that criminals learn pro-criminal definition, whereas law-abiding citizens learning anti-criminal definitions. Because sutherland was focused on the processes of what they learned, he didn"t specify what constitutes pro-criminal and anti-criminal definition. Sykes and matza"s neutralization theory begins where he left off (by examining these definitions) Neutralization theory is also a response to cultural deviance theory. Both neutralization and cultural deviance theory aims to theorize why young people offend (they want to explain juvenile delinquency as opposed to adult-offenders) Part of the difference between the two stems from the kind of theory being proposed. Cultural deviance theory also attempt to examine why lower-class neighbourhoods that are criminogenic.
