Читать книгу The Invisible Woman - Joanne Belknap - Страница 36

E. H. Sutherland, first alone and then in collaboration with Cressey, developed the theory of differential association (DAT) in the classic text Principles of Criminology (E. H. Sutherland, 1939; E. H. Sutherland & Cressey, 1966). Sutherland’s attempt was to move the major explanation of criminal behavior from poverty to association: Just as any other behavior is learned, so is criminal behavior. Thus, one’s peer group association is instrumental in determining whether one becomes delinquent.

Although Sutherland and Cressey agreed with Cohen’s contention that there is unequal access to success in the United States, they departed from Cohen’s belief that all classes have internalized the same definition of success (i.e., the goals of middle-class males). Further, Sutherland and Cressey claimed that criminal subcultures are not unique to frustrated working-class male youths; people of all classes, including white-collar workers, can and do partake in criminal behavior. Similarly, whereas Cohen defined a U.S. culture that excludes women and girls, Sutherland and Cressey’s perspective is not so exclusively male in theory and is presented as a general non-sex-specific theory (Naffine, 1987).

Despite Sutherland and Cressey’s promise of a non-sex-specific theory, they rarely addressed girls. And where girls are briefly mentioned, they are viewed as uniform and homogeneous. Again, girls are treated as peripheral and insignificant to the mainstream culture. Thus, Sutherland and Cressey’s gender-neutral approach exists only in words, not in content. What is additionally disturbing is the easy acceptance of Sutherland and Cressey’s view of males as “free to engage in a range of behaviors” and the view of girls as belonging in the family (Naffine, 1987). Further, girls’ perceived tendency toward abiding the law is portrayed as dull rather than as positive and moral (Naffine, 1987).

Feminist criticisms of DAT have centered mainly on Sutherland and Cressey’s decision to avoid discussing girls and women in any meaningful way (see K. J. Cook, 2016; Leonard, 1982; Naffine, 1987). K. J. Cook (2016, p. 336) takes this on most effectively by citing Sutherland and Cressey (1974) as stating “no other trait has as great a statistical importance as does sex in differentiating criminals from noncriminals,” and yet this was followed by their dismissal of sex and gender. K. J. Cook (2016) states, “And so, with the stroke of the pen, Sutherland and Cressey proclaim that the leading predictor of crime is inconsequential to understanding the causes of crime, and amputated gender from serious consideration by the scholarly community for decades to come” (p. 336). Some feminists have suggested, however, that DAT is a useful way of examining male and female delinquency rates and of explaining gender differences. Two points are important. First, girls’ relatively lower crime rates may largely be a result of the constraints they experience compared with boys. For example, at least traditionally, girls have been expected to stay closer to home, are more likely to have curfews, are more likely to be disciplined (particularly for minor infractions and sexual experimentation), and are generally provided less freedom than their brothers and other boys. The differential socialization of girls and boys, then, is believed to result in different or gendered behaviors of girls and boys (see Hoffman-Bustamante, 1973; Leonard, 1982; Lorber, 1994; Messner, 2000; Allison Morris, 1987; Ridgeway & Correll, 2004; Risman, 2004). The second point is that the increase in girls’ delinquency rates in the past couple of decades might be explained by females’ increased freedom. Even Cressey (1964) asserted that where there is greater gender equality, the association between crime and gender is likely to be lower.

Although Sutherland and Cressey failed to examine the relevance of DAT for an explanation of girls’ criminality, others did so, and DAT provides some useful insight to girls’ lower offending behaviors relative to boys’. For example, while finding support for DAT and a strong relationship between delinquent friends and delinquent behavior for both girls and boys, Hindelang (1971) reported that girls had fewer delinquent friends and less delinquent behavior than boys did. Giordano (1978) found delinquent girls were significantly influenced by their peers, but more so by their girl peers than their boy peers. Mears, Ploeger, and Warr (1998) found that while girls reported greater moral disapproval of all types of offenses, this could not solely explain boys’ higher rates of offending. Rather, it was this greater moral disapproval combined with the ability or desire to better block their delinquent peers’ influence that accounted for girls’ lower offense rates. Heimer and De Coster (1999) found that emotional bonds to families resulted in less attachment to violent behavior for girls (but not boys), traditional views of gender decreased girls’ (but not boys’) violence, and boys (but not girls) learned violence from aggressive friends and coercive parental discipline.