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Social Learning

The story of the murdered six-year-old Georgia boy, Christopher Barrios, is very sad and disturbing. New evidence shows that it was not just the one perpetrator who abused and killed this child, but his parents and a family friend were involved too. Convicted sex offender George Edenfield is the child predator that is being charged with the crime, along with his parents David and Peggy Edenfield. The family friend Donald Dale is charged with covering up evidence and concealing the murder. The boy’s body was found in a trash bag near the road. The father, David Edenfield, is also a convicted offender after pleading guilty in 1994 to incest with an adult in the family. George was convicted in 1997 for molesting two boys and is an unregistered sex offender. Using Akers and Burgess’ Social Learning Theory, I will attempt to explain why this crime was committed. Akers and Burgess modeled the Social Learning Theory after Sutherland’s Differential Association Theory and some of Akers theory is borrowed directly from Sutherland’s theory.
According to the theory, behavior is learned through interaction. The behavior can either be positive or negative. In this case, George may have learned the behavior from his father David. According to Sutherland, “the principal part of the learning of criminal behavior occurs in those groups which compromise the individual’s major source of reinforcements” (Sutherland, 1947: 5-7). This is generally the family unit. So, if your family unit is a cesspool of negative behavior and influence, the child and other family members will pick it up. This could be the case here. If the father had an attraction to young people, his son could learn this from him. There is also a reinforcement factor with the theory. If there is a negative reaction to the behavior, the person my stop that behavior, but if it is rewarded, the person may continue to repeat the behavior.
Sutherland states in his theory, a part that Akers borrows, “Criminal behavior is...