Techniques of Neutralization
Definition
Learned justifications, drawn from conventional morality itself, that let an offender suspend the moral bind of the law before or after an act without abandoning that morality.
Related terms
- Condemnation of the Condemners
- A neutralization that shifts attention from the offender's act to the motives and hypocrisy of police, teachers or other authorities who disapprove...
- Denial of Responsibility
- A neutralization in which the offender frames the act as caused by forces outside their control, such as a bad upbringing or...
- Drift
- A temporary, reversible state between full control and full freedom in which a person is loosely committed enough to conventional norms to...
- Inner Containment
- Reckless's term for the internal buffers, chiefly a favourable self-concept, goal orientation, frustration tolerance and internalised norms, that hold a person to...
- Outer Containment
- Reckless's term for external structures, such as family supervision, school attachment and community reinforcement, that hold a person to lawful conduct from...