Differential association theory proposes that through interactions with others, individuals learn values, attitudes, techniques, and motivations for criminal behavior. In his theory he has basic components that explain how people come to commit criminal acts. I agree with this theory because people act to adapt and adapt to their environment and I will explain more about why. The first thing he immediately talks about is how criminal behavior is learned. I agree with this statement. Criminal behavior is not inherited, like height, hair color or health problems. Someone isn't just born to be a criminal. The way people become criminals is by being brought up and raised in the wrong environment. Someone who was raised by abusive parents is more likely to have priority, meaning the acts that these people faced first. So someone is more likely to smoke marijuana than take cocaine because they encountered marijuana first and were quite experienced with it before doing so. Intensity has to do with the situation at hand, so if you're around a bunch of guys who want to smoke you might not be intensified to do it where like if you're around a girl you like and she's smoking marijuana the situation it gets more intense and you might end up wanting to do it too. The process of learning criminal behavior by association with criminal and anticriminal models involves all the mechanisms involved in any other learning. This means that children may start smoking at a young age because they imitate their parents who smoke. Or, if a person is seduced as in the example above, they would learn the behavior by association. Criminal behavior is an expression of general needs and values but is not explained by general needs similar to those of non-criminal behavior. For example, someone steals to make money while someone works hard to make money. So explaining criminal behavior in terms of such general needs is not the right way to explain it, because if that person were taught that if he needed money to go to work rather than go and steal, he wouldn't do it, which is why closes the criminal circle. behavior is learned and not
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