SOC208H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: White-Collar Crime, Differential Association, Social Disorganization Theory
Document Summary
Chapter 3: explaining white-collar crime: traditional criminological theories. One of sutherland"s professed goals in writing about white-collar crime was to reform criminological theory. Criminological theory was dominated by the view that crime was concentrated in the lower social classes and was caused by the personal and social pathologies that accompany poverty. Failed to fit the data on criminal behavior. Theorists have to take ideas and concepts that were originally developed to apply to traditional forms of crime and tweak them to account for the special features of white- collar crime and the distinguishing characteristics of white-collar offenders. There is little consensus on how best to explain white-collar crime. The same general processes that cause other sorts of crime also cause white-collar crime. Individual involvement in white-collar crime comes about as a result of a process called differential association. Differential association: criminal behavior is learned in association with those who define such criminal behavior.
