Crime manifests itself in various ways in society and it is often difficult to identify what drives people to commit certain actions. The Columbine shooting was a particular incident that resulted in tears and suffering and led to much research into what was going through the minds of these young people at the time of the shooting. Therefore, this article will specifically analyze the role of strengthening differential associations as modified by Akers in causing Dylan Klebold to commit such a heinous act, while also giving credit to Edwin Sutherland for being the first to formulate the framework of differential association. a middle-class family on September 11, 1981” (Dylan Klebold Biography, 2016). “His father In addition to this overview, Sutherland describes nine specific factors that can improve a person's ability to learn criminal behaviors, but for the purposes of this article, three of the nine will be analyzed closely; First, “criminal behavior must be learned through interaction with other people in the communication process” (Gongenvare and Dotter, 2007, 384). Furthermore, the notion of communication is broken down into two forms, verbal and gestural. Sutherland indicates that through gestures, conversation arouses a stimulus that allows a response from each individual; Analysis of these responses can indicate attitudes toward the subject or object. Second, differential association varies depending on the intensity, duration, frequency, priority, and timing of a person's learning process. Through this notion, the individual's self is neglected and more emphasis is placed on extrinsic factors. Furthermore, “it is an individual's experiences and how he or she defines those experiences that constitute learning to be criminal.” (Gongenvare & Dotter, 2007, In light of this, looking more deeply at Aker's modification of this theory, he takes into account the three factors listed above but proposes that in addition "behavior is learned on the basis of Skinner's principles of operant conditioning" with classical conditioning as a secondary factor" (Burgess & Akers, 1966, 137). For this process to take off, Akers first describes the necessary elements "the group/gang must have normative definitions of what it perceives as right or wrong, which will eventually turn into discriminating stimuli." (Bartol, Curt, & Bartol, 2010, 97) which are signals transmitted by subcultural or peer groups to indicate whether certain actions should be rewarded or punished. In this regard, “the strength and likelihood that a. person adopts these values ​​are indicative of the extent of reinforcement and its frequency” (Burgess and Akers)., 1966,