well-trained in the subject and did not being his organized work in criminology until 1921. Little is known about his personal life, but he was a religious fundamentalist who believed in strict adherence to the Baptist faith.
The primary sources of influence on Sutherland were several sociologists from the University of Chicago, and he was also influenced by his friend Henry McKay and by W.I. Thomas and George Herbert Mead. Sutherland stated that the most difficult and important issue in criminological theory is the relationship of personal traits to cultural patterns in the genesis of criminal behavior. His theory has been classified as social psychological on some level, and his theory is generally a learning theory, of which there are many variations. He does not seem to have been influenced by structuralism. His work shows a reaction to the biological and psychological determinism of the positivists, and Sutherland was trying to reach a level of abstraction beyond the individual or his or her surrounding environmen
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