Social Learning Theory of Crime and Deviance

Social Learning Theory of Crime and Deviance

Introduction

The article “Empirical Status of Social Learning Theory of Crime and Deviance: The Past, Present, and Future” gives empirical view of social learning theory. According to the Akers et al (2006), this theory gives logical, proven and confirmed evidence that in society people learn criminal and deviant behavior from one another. This article also focuses the scope of social learning theory in future and its role in problem solving. Most of the article is supported by the qualitative and quantitative data of other authors. However, all the presented material and references are authentic and reliable.

Criminological theories

In this article authors extensively worked on the social learning theory in the perspective of criminology. This theory explains how individual accompany, maintain and then adjust changes in criminal and deviant behavior. This theory is not only limited to define the cause of crimes, but also suggests preventive measures which can be taken in order to get rid of them. Furthermore, this theory says that people adopt beliefs, norms, values and attitudes from differential association. Differential association includes both direct and indirect interaction. The direction interaction is with family, friends and peer groups which have primary importance in the life of individual.

On the contrary, there is indirect interaction which secondary in nature e.g. media, games, internet and many other far away association which are called virtual groups. Additionally, there is more interesting concept in this theory; differential reinforcement. This says, people deviate from the right path because there is high greater frequency, value and anticipation of reward. In the social context, people believe that there will be symbolic reward by committing that particular crime, even though they know it is against the law (Athens & Vollmer, 2010).

The third concept of this theory is ...