This paper examines Edwin Sutherland's Differential Association Theory as a criminological framework for understanding drug trafficking in the United States and internationally. Beginning with concrete examples of drug-related corruption in Peru and Latin America, the paper surveys the roles of youth gangs, firearms, drug warlords, and racial disparities in drug enforcement before turning to Sutherland's nine postulates and his argument that criminal behavior — including drug use and trafficking — is fundamentally learned through social interaction. The paper also addresses recidivism data, Howard Becker's complementary work on marijuana use, critiques of the theory, and the legislative responses Congress has enacted to combat organized drug crime.
The problem of drug trafficking in America today is an enormous one, with severe repercussions for the future of the entire country. When retired General Barry McCaffrey, the Director of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, was on an official visit to Peru, that country was in the midst of a long series of scandals adversely affecting its administration. Reports revealed the discovery of approximately 170 kilograms of cocaine aboard the Peruvian Air Force plane that President Fujimori normally used for his travels. Shortly afterward, about 45 kilograms of cocaine were found aboard a Peruvian Navy ship docked in Vancouver, Canada. When accusations were exchanged, it was eventually concluded that Peruvian intelligence chief Montesinos had been protecting a drug trafficking organization known as the "Lopez Paredes" clan. This organization was supposedly dismantled in 1995, but in mid-August, the accused individual Demetrio Chavez — also known as "El Vaticano" — revealed in court that he had in fact been paying Montesinos US$50,000 every month in exchange for protection from investigation of his drug trafficking operations (Youngers & Rosin, 2005).
All of these allegations against Montesinos were published in La Reforma. The U.S. Embassy in Lima sent a letter to the Peruvian government stating that no U.S. drug enforcement officials had any relevant information confirming that high-ranking Peruvians were involved in drug trafficking. At the same time, another letter was sent to Washington asserting that the published information was false and that the accusations Chavez had leveled against Montesinos were unfounded. The cable also suggested that large-scale drug trafficking interests were behind the allegations, and that these efforts were probably intended to tarnish the reputation of the intelligence service (Youngers & Rosin, 2005). This situation illustrates the type of drug problem that U.S. officers and intelligence services must contend with on a daily basis — one where it is nearly impossible to distinguish true accusations from false ones, and where widespread bribery and corruption at all levels makes it exceedingly difficult to take appropriate action.
The gangs that exist in America today are also a significant part of the drug trafficking problem. Why does a young person join a gang, and what does he or she hope to achieve? There are no simple answers, but youths in the United States generally join gangs because their friends have done so. Once a young person joins a gang, however, he or she typically becomes involved in drugs — either through use, sales, or both — as well as in violent offending. Some researchers argue that these young people are attracted to gangs because they are already delinquent; others contend that gang membership itself causes delinquency and antisocial behavior. The National Evaluation of the Gang Resistance Education and Training (GREAT) program was initiated to study whether gang involvement precedes or follows a young person's involvement in drug use, drug sales, and drug trafficking more broadly, or whether these activities are simply inherent to gang culture (Huff & Huff, 2001).
Based on this study and numerous other investigations, it was concluded that gang involvement was associated with significantly higher levels of delinquency and drug use among members, and drug trafficking has more often than not been attributed to gang activity. Data consistently shows that gang-involved youth are far more likely to participate in drug trafficking than their non-gang peers. One important question, however, has remained unresolved: the degree to which gang youth are actually able to control drug sales. Some researchers argue that the basic organizational structure of most gangs is not conducive to sustaining drug sales operations, while others disagree. The general consensus is that almost all youth gangs are loosely organized, lacking a clear leader and the resources necessary for sustained drug trafficking. On the other hand, research by Fagan (1989) and Taylor (1989), as well as studies conducted by Van Winkle and Fleisher in Kansas City and St. Louis in 1996 and 1998 respectively, found that profits from drug sales were typically claimed by a single individual rather than shared collectively by the gang — meaning that the organization as a whole could not claim those proceeds (Huff & Huff, 2001).
Another grave problem related to drug trafficking in the United States is the relatively free availability of firearms. Drug dealers apparently prefer "medium-bore handguns" and shotguns, and rarely use machine guns in their activities. Most law enforcement personnel believe that many cases of innocent bystanders being killed during shootouts are in truth drug-trafficking-related crimes. However, research has shown this may not be accurate: only approximately 1% of homicides in the United States involve innocent bystanders. In general, the victims of drug-related violence are themselves drug traffickers, and they are more often killed intentionally rather than accidentally (Kleck, 2005). Notably, machine guns have not been used in these incidents, suggesting that the 1934 ban on machine guns has been largely effective. There have also been media allegations that the United States condoned drug trafficking by contra leaders, though Elliott Abrams circulated a memorandum refuting those claims and stating that cited figures were completely false (Leogrande, 2000).
Considerable research has been conducted on U.S. and Latin American drug policies, and the general conclusion is that these policies have largely failed. In fact, the proliferation of such policies often provoked violent responses from drug traffickers toward American government officials responsible for enacting them. Colombia's policymakers, for example, initially refused to extradite drug traffickers, then yielded to U.S. pressure, then reversed course in the face of violent intimidation by drug cartels, and finally acquiesced in August 1989 following the assassination of leading presidential candidate Senator Luis Carlos Galán. Nonetheless, U.S. drug policy has generally been characterized by a clear hierarchy of priorities, with drug trafficking placed at the very top — perhaps because of its inherently dangerous associations (Hartlyn, Varas, & Schoultz, 1993).
A phenomenon known as drug warlordism exists in Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, posing a major security challenge for the United States. Warlords have financed their struggles against Western states in two distinct contexts. The first involves drug-producing countries — those under the so-called "Golden Triangle" — and the various drug trafficking routes in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa, where central state authority has eroded across military, economic, and political spheres. These drug warlords preside over conditions of anarchy while simultaneously attempting to manage the chaos around them (Segell, 1997).
The drug warlord functions as a parochial militarist who thrives on the absence of central authority while also working to corrupt existing structures in order to advance his personal ambitions. Notably, these warlords impose no age restrictions on gang members — children as young as six years old have been pressed into service for drug trafficking purposes. The second context with severe implications for U.S. security involves the destination states for trafficked drugs — primarily the United States and Western Europe — where drug distribution networks are organized in ways similar to warlord-controlled gangs. Many of these networks originated in other criminal enterprises such as prostitution or money laundering. These activities impose enormous costs on sovereign states through police and court actions, as well as through treatment programs for those addicted to trafficked substances. International cooperation has frequently been identified as essential to combating these interconnected problems (Segell, 1997).
"Racial bias in drug enforcement and extradition policy"
As far as drug trafficking policy is concerned, the United States has made several attempts to use extradition as a tool for enforcing its anti-narcotics agenda. In Latin America, this approach has remained deeply unpopular, as many Latin Americans view it as an extension of "Yankee imperialism" (Bulmer-Thomas, 2003). Drug abuse has been steadily increasing over the years; cocaine abuse in particular has grown alarmingly, and lifetime dependence on cocaine rose from 0.14% in 1988 to 0.4% in 1998. Nearly all countries in South America, as well as Central America and the Caribbean, reported rising cocaine use over the same period. Brazil is by far the largest consumer of cocaine in the region, with an estimated 900,000 users, many of them children aged fifteen and older (United Nations Publications, 2003).
In 1939, the criminologist Edwin Sutherland developed a theory he called "Differential Association," which he outlined in his textbook Principles of Criminology. The theory holds that "criminal behavior is learned behavior" and that it is generally learned through "social interaction with others." Differential Association Theory remains popular among criminologists today because of its conceptual simplicity and the substantial body of evidence supporting it. Sutherland drew on three major theoretical currents of his era: the ecological and cultural transmission theory, symbolic interactionism, and culture conflict theory. At the time, criminology was widely criticized for lacking rigorous scientific foundations and coherent theoretical frameworks, which may have motivated Sutherland to formulate a more systematic account of criminal behavior.
The Differential Association Theory rests on nine key postulates: (1) criminal behavior is learned; (2) it is learned through communication and interaction with other people, especially in intimate group settings; (3) the learning includes both the complicated and simple techniques of committing a crime; (4) the specific direction of motives and drives is learned from the legal definitions that surround a potential criminal act — whether those definitions are perceived as favorable or unfavorable to law-breaking; (5) a person becomes criminal when definitions favorable to violating the law outweigh definitions unfavorable to it; (6) differential associations vary in frequency, duration, priority, and intensity; (7) the process of learning criminal behavior through association with criminal and anti-criminal patterns involves all the same mechanisms as any other learning; (8) criminal behavior is an expression of general needs and values, but it cannot be explained by those needs and values alone, since non-criminal behavior also expresses the same general needs and values; and (9) criminal behavior, once learned, need not reflect a generalized set of anti-social values unique to criminals.
According to Sutherland, criminology can be defined as the body of knowledge that regards crime and delinquency as social phenomena, encompassing the processes of making laws, breaking laws, and reacting to the breaking of laws. If criminal behavior involves the breaking of laws, and if individuals learn to break those laws from others, then it follows logically that criminal behavior is transmitted socially. The theory did attract significant criticism, however. Detractors noted that it fails to account for individual free will, gives no weight to the victim's role, rests on a psychology of rational deliberation rather than unconscious processes, does not explain the ultimate origin of crime, and ignores biological factors (Edwin Sutherland, Differential Association Theory).
Sutherland also emphasized that many urban neighborhoods are not merely "unorganized" but actively "disorganized" around criminal activity. The rapid changes that occur daily in urban settings give rise to criminality and antisocial behavior, potentially leading to a breakdown of social values and traditions, and ultimately to the development of delinquency and deviant behavior — particularly among youth (Chapter 8: Social Disorganization, Anomie, and Strain Theories).
"Recidivism data, Becker's work, and urban disorganization"
Edwin Sutherland's Differential Association Theory holds that a drug abuser learns his behavior through others who are engaged in the same activity. This means that it is possible to address the root of the drug problem by effectively targeting those who exert harmful influences on others and draw them into habits of drug use, abuse, and ultimately drug trafficking. The theory's enduring relevance lies in its capacity to explain how criminal behavior — from street-level gang activity to transnational drug networks — is propagated through learned social interaction, and why interrupting those learning environments is essential to any serious anti-drug strategy.
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