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Social Process Theory Of Crime

912 Words4 Pages

Raymond Skoff
Professor Shaheen
CJC-207
16 April 2023

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the social process theory as well as to discuss crimes of different categories such as violent, property, and public disorder from the perspective of this theory, we will end this paper with going over ways to prevent or eliminate crime through the social process theory.
Theory
The social process theory developed by Edwin Sutherland is a theory that views crime as a result of people’s interactions with organizations, institutions, and other processes in society. According to this theory people of all walks of life have the ability to become a criminal if they stay in destructive social relationships. The theory is broken down into three …show more content…

Later on Akers reorganized Sutherland's work using the psychological learning theory, after he named his approach the differential reinforcement theory. Sykes and Matza's theory of neutralization shows that young people learn behaviors that enable them to overcome societal values and norms and break the law. The reason that this theory is different form the others is that it focuses on the society aspect of influence and how society can change one's character from an upstanding citizen to a hardened felon; the theory itself was created back in 1939 but still holds true to this day because of how well it explains where criminal behavior comes from, it has two solid cores in which interaction happens, society and the person and the exchange is where the idea of the theory comes …show more content…

The next example is for property crime which we hear and see locally all of the time, graffiti, bashing someone's car or property with a bat, these are all usually a sort of initiation for groups of criminals then afterwards skills are picked up to help them commit more acts. The third type which is white collar crime is not so much a match for the social process theory because these crimes are usually committed by someone by themselves. The last of the quartet is organized crime which is heavily influenced by the social process theory, where organized crime has the sort of ‘family of crime’ mentality, it brings people into crime and teaches them the skills they need to commit those

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