Sutherland s theory of differential association asserts that occupational criminality, like other forms of systematic criminal behavior, is learned through frequent direct or indirect association with people who are already engaging in such behavior. Embezzlement is theft from one s employer and is usually committed by otherwise law-abiding people during their employment. Fraud is obtaining money or property under false pretenses and can occur at any level of business and in any type of business relationship. Public-Order Offenders constitute the largest category of criminals and include crimes like prostitution, gambling, use of illegal substances, drunkenness, vagrancy, disorderly conduct, and traffic violations. Conventional offenders tend to be young adults who commit robbery, larceny, burglary, and gang theft as a way of life, beginning their criminal careers in adolescence as members of juvenile gangs.
Organized criminals participate in drug trafficking, extortion, prostitution, or gambling.
Professional criminals are people like the expert safe cracker, the disarming con artist, the person who switches diamonds in a store, counterfeiters, and pickpockets. Various causes and prevalence of crime include biological, demographic, and sociological factors based on conflict theory, functionalism, and interactionism. Conflict theorists identify inequalities of wealth, status, and power as the underlying conditions that produce criminal behavior. Rehabilitation rests on the concept of crime as a social aberration and the offender as a social misfit whose aberrant behavior can be modified to conform to society s norms. Recidivism is the probability that a former inmate will break the law after release and be arrested again.