Social Behaviorist's Perspective on Integration of Theories of Crime and Deviance (From Theoretical Integration in the Study of Deviance and Crime: Problems and Prospects, P 23-36, 1989, Steven F Messner, et al, eds. -- See NCJ-118940)

• NCJ Number: 118941
• Author(s): R L Akers
• Date Published: 1989
• Length: 14 pages
• Sale Source: California Correctional Peace Officers Assoc
• Publication Type: Research (Theoretical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: *This document is currently unavailable from NCJRS. From the SUNY Series in Critical Issues in Criminal Justice.

Annotation

After examining some of the problems and objections to integrating theories of crime and deviance, this chapter pursues theory integration under social learning theory.

Abstract

There is apparently a consensus that theoretical integration is desirable to eliminate duplication and to centralize and prune related concepts. There is no serious barrier to integration caused by differing conceptions of the dependent variable of crime and deviance so long as the dependent variable is measured empirically as a dichotomy or a scale in which the absence of deviance is counted as conformity and its reciprocal is counted as deviance. Social learning is one kind of integration which has been given considerable attention in the criminological and deviance literature. Social learning theory includes all the mechanisms of learning. Other aspects of social bonding, anomie, and other theories could be further explicated by reference to discriminative stimuli, schedules of reinforcement, satiation, deprivation, matching function, behavior chains, learning deficits, conditioning, and shaping.