| Professor Sutherland's "differential association theory" had a very high position in American's criminology's history. The theory first clarify the cause of all kinds of crimes from the point of view of sociology, and try to explain all kind of crimes by applying a single core conception. Thereby get comprehensively attention. There are two parts in Sutherland's theory: first of it is microcosmic part, which is about why a individual commit crime; the macroscopical part of this theory is about "differential social organization", as whole, what this theory expressed is: The social disorganization (anomie) lead to different social organizations and different behavior criterions, some of these criterions conflict with the whole society's role, and when some people follow these criterions, and accepted extra definitions which favor to violating the law(delinquency) even crime, then they tend to vulnerable to all misbehaves or crime afterward. All kind of crimes are come from this process. But there is a basic limitation in the deduction process of the theory's microcosmic part. It's deduction can't be falsified; many empirical study have confirmed the outcome of this process rather than the cause process; the microcosmic part of this theory can't give us much policy suggestion neither. The macroscopical part leave us some suggestion about how to control crime is: We should find out what are the "anomies" represented in our society, and try to control the crime by all kinds of social policy arrangements, paying more attention on situational prevention, resolving social structure problem which lead to crime. And because when we control crime by these measures also may relate to other social problem, the way we trying to eliminate the crime from our society must consider the social cost, and maintaining balance between controlling crime and the cost we can bear. Finally, we really needn't to get to a general theory which can interpret all kinds of crimes to achieve this goal. |
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