World of Criminal Justice on Edwin Hardin Sutherland
The pioneering work of Edwin Hardin Sutherland greatly expanded understanding of crime. Sometimes called the "Dean of Criminology," Sutherland wrote and taught between the 1920s and his death in 1950. A sociologist by training, he rejected early twentieth-century notions about criminals in his textbook Criminology (1924), for decades the standard textbook in the field. His enormous contributions included defining white-collar crime and elaborating his influential theory of differential association, which explains how people learn to become criminals. After an early association with the University of Chicago, he taught at Indiana University, where he co-founded its criminology department.
Born in 1883, in Gibbon, Nebraska, Sutherland was the son of a college professor. Earning his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago, he specialized in political economy until receiving an invitation to write a criminology textbook. The challenge of the book, a subject Sutherland had only occasionally taught, changed his life. With its success, he received an invitation to teach at his alma mater, where, with a sense of intellectual humility, he began his life's work.
While early editions of Criminology drew upon the literature of the day, a breakthrough came a decade later. Sutherland had already disagreed with the prevalent notion that criminals were products of feeble-mindedness. After 1932, in response to criticism, he began questioning the dominant view that explained crime through the many socio-economical, political, and geographical influences of the so-called "multiple factors" approach. By the time the textbook had been retitled Principles of Criminology (1934), both ferment in the field and his own relationship with a colorful criminal were leading Sutherland to new ideas. Discussions with the con man, Broadway Jones, led to their collaboration studying his life and techniques, The Professional Thief (1937).
This growth resulted in the theory of differential association, formally proposed in 1939 and revised three times. Generally speaking, the theory holds that criminal behavior is learned through social interaction with others. In nine postulations, Sutherland explained how learning values, attitudes, and techniques through communication with criminals in intimate groups can create criminals. Mere association with other criminals is not enough, but learning an excess of what Sutherland called "definitions" does. Earning ardent praise and criticism in equal measure, the influential theory seeded the ground for other social learning theories that followed.
Between 1935 and 1949, Sutherland chaired the Sociology Department at the University of Indiana. Along with the pioneering law professor Jerome Hall, Sutherland established and taught in the university's Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology in 1935, from which many of his students went on to fame in the field. In this period he published the groundbreaking paper, White-Collar Criminality (1940), providing a name for such crimes as fraud, embezzlement, and misuse of public funds and blasting stereotypical views of crime; indeed, he regarded white-collar crime as the most serious threat to society. In recognition of Sutherland's life and contributions, the American Society of Criminology honors recipients annually with the prestigious Edwin H. Sutherland Award.
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