The Life and Accomplishments of Edwin Sutherland. Edwin Sutherland was a sociologist who was passionate at trying to define and explain crime and criminal behavior.
The Life and Accomplishments of Edwin Sutherland
Edwin Sutherland was born on August 13, 1883 in Gibbon, Nebraska; he was the son of George and Lizzie Sutherland. Edwin was born into a family headed by an authoritarian, religious fundamentalist father who followed all the rigid and strict practices of the Baptist faith. His father, George Sutherland, a minister and teacher, was the head of colleges in Kansas and Nebraska, including Grand Island College a conservative Baptist school. Edwin Sutherland attended this school and graduated with an A.B. in 1904 (J. Robert Lilly, Richard A. Ball, Francis T. Cullen, 2011 p. 269). In 1906 Edwin continued his education at the University of Chicago where he received his PH.D. in sociology and political economy. After his graduate studies, Sutherland went on to teach at a number of Midwestern institutions: William Jewell College (1913-1919), the University of Illinois (1919-1926), University of Minnesota (1926-1929), University of Chicago (1930-1935), and University of Indiana 1935, where he was Chairman of the Sociology Department. Sutherland was relieved of administrative duties in 1949 but continued his teaching and research career at the University of Indiana until his death (Hall, 1950). Sutherland devoted his life and gained public recognition as one of this country’s leading criminologist through teaching, writing, and research (Odum, H. W. 1951). Even though his strict upbringing is what shaped his life and career, as an adult Edwin Sutherland didn’t follow the Baptist fundamentalism lifestyle, he enjoyed things like smoking, bridge, golf and movies (J. Robert Lilly, Richard A. Ball, Francis T. Cullen, 2011 p. 269). Sutherland’s work was also greatly influenced by a number of worldly
events that took place within his life time. Among them were; The Populist Movement in Nabraska1890, World War I 1914, The Great Depression 1929, and World War II 1939.
Edwin Sutherland was a sociologist who was passionate at trying to define and explain crime and criminal behavior. Sutherland started his investigation into crime and criminal behavior when he was a working at the University of Chicago and was asked to write a book about on Criminology. In 1924 Sutherland had his first book Criminology published, but he didn’t stop there. Sutherland went on to revise and update his thoughts on crime through continued research, observation and teachings, which led him to produce three more editions to his first book on criminology (Odum, H. W. 1951). One of his most accomplished sociological contributions to the study of criminology was his formulation of the differential association theory in 1930. This theory was published in his book Principles of Criminology in 1939. This theory was totally different from the previous theories of classical and biological theories, in as much as it stated, crime was a product of learning the behavior of criminal activities through association (siegel, 2009, p 203). According to Marshall (1998) Sutherland wrote this theory: “as a response to the dominant multi-factorial approaches to crime causation, associated particularly with the work of Eleanor (Glueck) and Sheldon Glueck. In contrast to their account, which identified long lists of factors which might contribute to crime causation, Sutherland aimed to build an integrated and sociological theory which stressed that crime was basically a learned phenomenon. The theory was elaborated and refined in various editions of Sutherland's highly influential textbook Principles of Criminology (later co-authored with Donald Cressey), and came to be presented in nine propositions”
