What is Differential Association Theory?

Edwin Sutherland proposed the differential association hypothesis in 1939. It discusses how individuals learn to be criminals through their surroundings. Individuals develop the ideals, attitudes, tactics, and reasons for illegal activity via their relationships with others.

Differential Association Theory's Nine Propositions

The notion of differential association was first stated explicitly in the 1939 edition of Principles of Criminology, and he presented his definitive theory in the fourth edition. There are nine main postulates in his theory. 

1.  Criminal conduct may be taught. This means that criminal conduct is not inherited in the traditional sense; similarly, a person who has not been taught in criminal behavior does not originate it.
2. Criminal conduct is learnt via interaction with other people through a communication process.
   In many circumstances, this communication is vocal, but it also involves gestures.
3. The majority of criminal conduct is learned in small groups of friends and family.
   In a negative sense, this suggests that impersonal communication, such as movies or newspapers, has a little role in criminal behavior.
4. When criminal conduct is learnt, it comprises (a) the precise direction of motives, urges, rationalizations, and attitudes; and (b) the tactics for completing the crime, which can be quite easy.
5. Definitions of legal codes as favorable or unfavorable provide insight into the precise direction of motives and impulses. This type of issue is most common in the United States, where there is a cultural contradiction with the legal law.
6. A person becomes delinquent when there are more meanings favorable to breaking the law than definitions that are adverse to breaking the law. Differential association is based on this idea.
   People become criminals not just as a result of their interactions with criminal patterns, but also as a result of their isolation from anticriminal patterns. In a negative sense, this indicates that associations that are neutral in terms of crime have little or no impact on the emergence of criminal conduct.
7. The frequency, length, priority, and degree of differential association can all be different.
   Priority appears to be significant mostly because of its selective impact, and its intensity has to do with factors like the prestige of the source of a criminal or anticriminal pattern, as well as emotional reactions to the relationship. These modalities would be graded quantitatively and mathematically, but no formula has been devised in this regard, and developing one would be extremely difficult. 
8. Learning illegal behavior by associating it with criminal and anti-criminal 3. patterns entails all of the mechanisms involved in any other type of learning. In a negative sense, this suggests that learning illegal behavior is not limited to imitation. When a person is seduced, for example, he or she learns illegal conduct via association, but this is not the same as imitation.
9. While criminal conduct is an expression of universal wants and values, it cannot be explained by those needs and values since non-criminal behavior is also an expression of those needs and values. Thieves steal in order to make money, but honest laborers also work in order to make money. Attempts to describe criminal conduct using universal drives and values such as the money motivation have proven useless, and must continue to be futile, because they explain both legitimate and criminal behavior equally well.