We sketch in this chapter the conceptual framework that we use to analyze and interpret Sam’s life history narrative and his account of the theft underworld and illegal enterprise. That framework relies heavily on differential association and social learning theory, opportunity theory, and labeling theory (although elements of anomie-relative deprivation and social bonds theories are also applied, along with ideas from rational choice and social exchange perspectives). We also apply life course and criminal career perspectives, which have a long history in crime and deviance writings in sociology and that today are receiving enhanced attention in popular and social science writings on crime. In addition, we develop a theoretical perspective on the nature of criminal enterprise, which we subsequently elaborate in later chapters.
The theoretical perspective we present rests very broadly on the intuitive yet robust hypothesis that criminal behavior depends on the coincidence of being both willing and able (having both the skills and the actual opportunity), on the coincidence of appropriate motivation and realistic opportunity, or, as Stef-fensmeier described in The Fence, on whether crime is subjectively acceptable and objectively possible. While our analysis addresses the matter of motivation in some detail, we especially focus on the notion of opportunity since its treatment in the criminological literature is sketchy and undeveloped.
The concept of criminal opportunity is a central element of our theoretical framework. Strongly implicit in the writings of Edwin Sutherland and subsequently rendered explicit by Richard Cloward, the concept remains largely silent in many contemporary treatments of crime. This silence is strongly at odds with how social scientists approach legitimate pathways and legitimate work careers, where the role of opportunity (e.g., job skills and openings, educational level, contact networks, gender, race, or ethnic segregation, social capital) is so central to the analysis. As with the legitimate world, we emphasize the notion that key forms of social capital increase success in the criminal world. These forms of criminal social capital include competence and collaborative relationships, criminal resourcefulness, and embeddedness in criminal arenas and networks and the scope of opportunities they bring. The extent of one’s criminal social capital (or lack thereof) is a key element leading toward or away from commitment to sustained criminal involvement or lifestyle. One major goal of Confessions is to develop the notion of criminal opportunity and expand its application to an understanding of criminal careers and criminal enterprise. We posit the importance of variable access to messages and opportunities as key for understanding pathways into (or out of) crime.
Furthermore, the notion of commitment is a key organizing concept for our understanding of persistence or desistance in crime. Relatedly, concepts from the labeling theory and symbolic interactionist literature such as agency, interpretation and reflexivity, drift, interaction process, pathways, and turning points are explicitly or implicitly central to our entire conceptualization of Sam’s criminal career and criminal enterprise.
As we see it, the key elements of differential association/social learning theory are (1) that people commit crime when crime is, or they are able to make it, subjectively acceptable morally, cognitively, or emotionally; (2) that prior behavior and experiences in which people are rewarded for criminal involvement positively reinforces criminal behavior; and (3) that having or acquiring access to criminal opportunities and networks and having the criminal resourcefulness to take advantage of them foster criminal involvement. While this latter theme of opportunity may be implicit in Sutherland’s differential association theory, it is explicit in Akers’s social learning theory.
That delinquent/criminal behavior, like most social behavior, is learned in the process of social interaction is at the core of differential association and social learning theory. In Sutherland’s (1947) classic statement, criminal or delinquent behavior involves the learning of (a) techniques of committing crimes and (b) orientations (motives, drives, rationalizations) and attitudes favorable to violation of law. Differential association refers to differences in association with messages (orientations, attitudes, skills, knowledge) favorable or unfavorable to law violation.
Akers (Akers et al. 1979; Akers 1998) combines Sutherland’s ideas with Sykes and Matza’s (1957) theory of vocabularies of motive and crime and with developments in social psychology that postdated Sutherland to articulate a social learning theory of crime that specifies the process of differential association in more detail and specificity. According to Akers, crime is learned through three conceptually distinct—but potentially interrelated—social processes: differential association, differential reinforcement, and imitation. Akers’s key addition to this perspective is the notion that differential association includes differential reinforcement relative to learned or anticipated rewards and punishments {e.g., in pursuing criminal as compared to conventional activities or roles). In sum, socialization favorable to crime involves learning definitions, attitudes, behaviors, skills, assessments of rewards versus risks, and vocabularies of motive favorable to given forms of deviance, as well as forming relationships with deviant others and self-definitions in terms of deviant identities.
For both Sutherland and Akers, the key principle is that criminality and especially systematic or repetitive criminality is learned: “It is learned in direct or indirect association with those who already practice criminal behavior; and that those who learn this criminal behavior are segregated from frequent and intimate contacts with law-abiding behavior” (Sutherland 1940:10-11). Unfortunately, both the specific content of what is learned and the process by which it is learned has not received enough attention in either theory or research. Some prominent treatments of differential association actually hamper its application through incomplete, even inaccurate, accounts of the theory. Such treatments of differential association and social learning theory often see it only as a suhcultural theory or as a theory of peer influence. In addressing these shortcomings, we consider the following as key, often neglected elements of differential association.
The concept of normative or message conflict frames the theory. Normative conflict is simply the notion that various groups and subgroups in society differ in terms of “codes of conduct” or moral systems including their definitions of right and wrong, and in their definitions of whether and to what extent individuals are obligated to follow laws (either particular ones or laws in general). These groups can include subcultures, professions and occupational groups, ethnic groups, voluntary associations, religious groups, neighborhoods, and other collectivities. This normative conflict, in turn, is played out at both the individual and group levels.
The structural, group-level manifestation of normative conflict is differential social organization. Differential social organization refers to differences between individuals in social or cultural groups, collectivities, or community settings within which they are located or with which they identify. The norms, values, meanings, skills, and definitions found within these groups can be favorable to particular kinds of crime, or to crime in general. In addition, cultural, subcultural, or group messages or definitions can be supportive, neutral, hostile, or mixed toward crime. Furthermore, many groups draw a thin line between legitimate and illegitimate activities. The thinner this line, the more the potential for criminality, and the line is thinner in some groups or settings than in others.
Groups are organized differently (e.g., in terms of skills, status orders, philosophies of life, vocabularies of motives or neutralizations, and network relationships), so that some are more organized for crime or exposed to crime-favorable messages than are others. The social and cultural organization of various groups or settings can potentially be favorable for crime in general, for specific kinds of crimes, or for specific kinds of crimes in specific circum-stances. Therefore, differential association/social learning theory is both a theory of general criminal behavior and offense-specific behavior; of both generalized criminal propensity or versatility and specialization in crime. In sum, Sutherland describes the effect of differential social organization this way: “The law is pressing in one direction, and other forces are pressing in the opposite direction” (1940:12).
As we learn from Confessions, Sam’s career is an illustration of how biography is embedded within differential social organization and association. The nearby gas station hangout, the penitentiary setting, the theft subculture, the local quasi-legitimate business community, and local organized crime networks all provided him with abundant messages and opportunities for criminal enterprise.
It is important to note that differential social organization need not entail or imply oppositional culture, as some caricatures of differential association theory argue (Kornhauser 1978; Hirschi 1996). First, differential association theory does not assume an overarching dominant culture characterized by consensus, but instead treats as variable the existence of dominant cultural norms and the degree of consensus around them. Second, while oppositional cultures are possible, they are but one potential manifestation of differential social organization. More accurately, subcultures and their messages vary in the degree to which they contradict legal norms, and how overtly or subtly they may contradict them. Sometimes subcultural messages can be largely congruent with dominant culture, but can contain themes or subthemes that subtly encourage lawbreaking. Furthermore, dominant cultures often contain contradictory messages, as Merton (1938) noted long ago. For example, American culture values honesty and trust, but also values shrewdness and what Charles Dickens called “the love of smart dealing.”
Although Sutherland did not spell it out, the notion of opportunity is part and parcel of the concept of differential social organization, and is central to his conceptualization of criminal careers (see especially The Professional Thief 1937). In fact, Sutherland admitted later in his life that opportunity was a key missing ingredient in his original formulation (Merton 1997). He was gratified to see that Cloward and Ohlin (1960) produced a theory of criminal opportunity to complement differential association.
In our view, the concept of criminal opportunity in criminology is underdeveloped. In Confessions, we seek to help build and better understand this important but neglected concept.1 Many treatments of criminal opportunity, we believe, suffer from several limitations. First, despite Cloward and Ohlin’s emphasis that criminal opportunity structures vary widely, it is common in criminology to see criminal opportunity treated as a given, or something ubiquitous that would-be offenders simply stumble across in the course of their routine activities. But this ignores the practical reality that an offender’s scope of opportunities is not static but is rather an ongoing process in which s/he (or the group) continuously constructs his or her habits, know-how, and circle of contacts in striving for some immediate goal or extended venture. To recognize this latter reality is also to emphasize the role of human agency in the opportunity—crime relationship. Second, opportunity is often treated as something separate from motivation. Third, criminal opportunity is usually treated as a unitary concept, but in fact there are different types of criminal opportunity, and the distribution of these types has a great deal to do with the stratification of the underworld. Fourth, criminal opportunities are seldom viewed in relation to larger social changes. That is, as society changes, the nature and distribution of criminal opportunities also change. Fifth, the extent to which many people live a life of virtue because they lack the good opportunity to do otherwise is, we believe, a key missing ingredient in theoretical discussions of crime today.
Of these limitations, perhaps the most important is the need to better conceptualize the role of criminal opportunity in shaping or restricting pathways into virtue or vice because of varying access to know-how and social contacts for achievement in crime (e.g., pursuing money-oriented crimes more safely and profitably). Depending on one’s biography and embeddedness in diverse groups and settings, people differ in their prospects for selection and recruitment (and for being able to recruit other co-offenders), in the range of career paths and access to them (opened by way of participation in these groups), and in opportunities for tutelage, increased skills, and rewards. For example, not only does embeddedness in different kinds of groups, neighborhoods, and communities influence who has more or less criminal opportunities in the first place (differential social organization), but broader societal sentiments such as racism and sexism also profoundly shape both the extent and especially the types of criminal opportunities available. In particular, racism and sexism shape criminal opportunity in at least two ways: (1) in blacks and women being excluded from certain crime groups and networks; and (2) in blacks and women being relegated to less-valued or less rewarding roles within crime partnerships, groups, or networks.
Building on Steffensmeier’s (1983) extension of illegitimate opportunity, access to crime opportunities entails differences across individuals and groups in access to civil, preparatory, or technical knowledge useful for committing crime as well as access to (a) places, victims, and suitable targets, (b) tools and hardware, and (c) contacts or networks facultative for actual crime commission.2
Civil knowledge refers to knowledge that most people in some ways have, to conventional kinds of knowledge that can easily be transferred or “sharpened” for criminal ends. Examples of this kind of civil knowledge are found in Sam’s later discussion of his foray into passing checks while a prison escapee and his explanation of the role of the “drop-off” driver for a burglary crew. Preparatory knowledge refers to familiarity with orientations and techniques of theft and hustling that is acquired by “hanging around” or being embedded in groups or settings where general or specific forms of crime and vice routinely or periodically take place. For example, a young person simply hanging out at Casey’s Pub or at Sam’s secondhand store, where “it’s only natural you would pick up things,” would gain such preparatory knowledge “by osmosis” for varied theft or hustling endeavors. This know-how also would foster their recruitment into theft by its practitioners if they are seeking co-offenders. Technical knowledge is knowledge that is mainly or only acquired by way of access to people in specialized locations. As described in Sam’s narrative, for example, one learns the ropes of safecracking by tutelage from other safecrackers.
These types of crime know-how can easily shade one into the other, and this is particularly the case with technical as compared to preparatory knowledge. One can hardly pursue criminal opportunities where the accepted skills, styles, and informal know-how are unfamiliar. One does better to look for a line of action for which one has the cultural equipment. Preparatory knowledge is that which comes from familiarity with hustling or theft because of “hanging around,” or being around practitioners of crime and vice, or being in settings where such activities occur, or perhaps from being in occupations like policing that provide the learning for general or crime-specific skills. In other words, people gain preparatory knowledge by simply being exposed to the umwelt (or “surrounding world”) of a criminal lifestyle and its social world (see Adler and Adler).3
For example, individuals involved in recreational drug use or the “party scene” may observe drug transactions or come into contact with suppliers from which they acquire some knowledge preparedness for drug dealing (that is, they learn about drag paraphernalia, specific skills like “cutting” or “weighting,” how to get along with fellow drug hustlers, how to avoid being exploited by customers, etc.). In this way, the learning of attitudes conducive to general or specific forms of theft and hustling may begin long before one actually becomes involved in them.
In turn, crime opportunities can be distinguished relative to whether they encompass (1) underworld versus upperworld forms of criminality, (2) solo, partnership, or more organized forms of criminality, (3) unskilled, moderately skilled, or highly skilled criminal activities, (4) short-term and situational versus long-term, sustained, and self-generating forms and (5) minor, less serious versus lucrative, more serious forms.4
In effect, individuals and groups vary in criminal social capital, which is the information, skills, habits, role models, social networks, and resources necessary for success in criminal endeavors—in particular, to pursue crime regularly, safely, and profitably. The narratives and commentaries to follow, particularly on the types of thieves and types of fences, the importance of networks and criminal capital in fencing, and the social organization and “pecking order” of the underworld all key off these distinctions in terms of criminal capital and opportunity.
A person’s life choices are structured insofar as both legitimate and criminal skills are concerned. In many cases, the range of criminal roles a prospective offender can satisfactorily fill may be small and, for the most part, he or she may not be able to graduate from marginal or petty offender status to a more lucrative, higher ranking criminal occupation. But when one has acquired more profitable criminal skills, acumen, and contacts, a different trajectory is available. Furthermore, the opportunity to acquire criminal skills also may change over the life course. As will be seen later, the nature of skills for theft or criminal enterprise, the great variability in individuals’ possession of them, how people acquire them, and how skills and opportunity mutually influence each other over the life course are major conceptual themes illustrated by Sam Goodman’s narratives throughout the book.
The availability of criminal opportunities also has a motivational side. While analytically distinct, opportunity and motivation intertwine in reality in ways that render them not easily distinguished. Being able to do something often makes one more willing to do it, just as being willing often makes one pursue the ability to do something. As Steffensmeier notes: “The availability of concrete opportunities helps explain why offenders gravitate to those activities which are easily available, are within their skills, provide a satisfactory return, and carry the fewest risks” (1983:1025).
The individual-level manifestation of normative conflict is the process of differential association. Criminal behavior becomes more likely to the extent that individuals learn and internalize procriminal norms, values, meanings, skills, and definitions through socialization and social learning processes within the kinds of procriminal group contexts described above. “Whether a person becomes a criminal or not is determined largely by the comparative frequency and intimacy of his contacts with the two types of behavior” (i.e., “criminal or law-abiding”) (Sutherland 1940:11).
Procriminal messages will have varying degrees of influence on individuals, depending on the source, emotional intensity, frequency, and duration of the individual’s contact with the messages. Associations that occur earlier in one’s life (priority), occur more often (frequency), last longer and occupy more time (duration), and involve others with whom one has the more important relationships (intensity or source) will have the greater effect or criminal or law-abiding behavior.
Recent discussions of differential association/social learning theory (both favorable and critical) have tended to treat differential association as synonymous with peer influence (see especially Warr’s [2002] review of this issue). Literally dozens of articles exist that operationalize differential association theory with some measure or another of peer influence, and treat interaction with deviant peers as the only association of import for transmitting criminal messages, and family, teachers, or employers as the only associations important for transmitting anticriminal messages. We are uncertain how and why differential association/social learning theory came to be identified solely with peer influence.
However, one crucial point that has gotten lost in these treatments is that procriminal messages need not come from interaction with peers. Differential association is a theory of differences in association with criminal messages, not any particular kind of associate or person (e.g., peers). Thus, association with criminal messages (or anticriminal messages) can come through association and learning at the hands of parents, siblings, or other family members as well as peers; and the association and learning can occur by way of general culture, the media, one’s occupational group, or a diversity of other groups or settings. As will be seen later, this point is especially illustrated by Sam Goodman’s early criminal career and the messages he learned from some members of his family.
Differential association is also a theory of both criminal versatility and specialization. That is, one may be exposed to and learn messages and skills favorable for crime in general or for varied kinds of crime. For example, one may leam to “make a buck” from widely varying criminal activities whenever various opportunities present themselves (as members and associates of La Cosa Nostra apparently do, according to Sam’s later narrative on organized crime). Or, one might learn messages favorable to using violence to get what one wants, whether it be settling disputes, emotional satisfaction, or money. Alternatively, one can be exposed to and learn messages and skills favorable to one kind of crime but not others. For example, one may learn messages and skills favorable to embezzlement, taking bribes, or burglary that do not translate into a willingness or ability to deal drugs or pimp.
We make two final points about differential association/social learning theory and its relationship to other popular theoretical ideas in criminology. Rational choice and social exchange theories that are so popular today see criminal behavior as a decision-making process involving an assessment of costs and risks as well as rewards or profits. The rewards or reasons for committing crime in rational choice models are largely material, i.e., the score, the catch, or payment; whereas social exchange models stress not only material but also immaterial profits or rewards, like social approval, self-satisfaction, and excitement. The key ideas of both rational choice and social exchange perspectives are consistent with and easily incorporated into differential association/social learning as a more general theory of crime and deviance (see Steffensmeier and Ulmer 2003). Contagion models of crime are based on the premise that the deviant behavior (e.g., violence, drug use) of neighbors and peers strongly influences or spreads to the behavior of others (Jones and Jones 2000). Actually, this notion of contagion is simply one element of differential association theory.
As we see it, a key concept of social control, or social bonding theory, attachments, is also a key element of differential association and social learning theories. Interpersonal attachments of all kinds—not just peers—are certainly a potential influence on the exposure, intensity, duration, primacy, and adoption of messages favorable and unfavorable to crime.
Central to several major theories of crime is the task of explaining continuity (and by implication change) in criminal activity and careers. Sociologists have long relied on the concept of commitment for explaining such continuity (see reviews by Becker 1960; Ulmer 2000). In fact, commitment is a term widely used in criminological theorizing (Bernard 1987). It is most visibly central to social control theory, where commitment is seen as a key “stake in conformity.” The concept of commitment is also often used in labeling theory, where it is seen as an “investment” that sustains criminal involvement. Furthermore, similar or closely related concepts such as attachment, allegiances, or side bets are often used in criminology as explanations for continuity in crime or conformity.
Despite Howard Becker’s (1960) call for more systematic and differentiated conceptualizations of commitment, most criminologists still use the term in a simplistic, undifferentiated manner (see reviews by Johnson 1991; Ulmer 1994). However, different types of commitment can easily be recognized, and different kinds of causes and experiences produce them. It is therefore important to use a differentiated, specified conceptual framework for thinking about commitment rather than a simplistic and unitary one that confounds different kinds of commitment experiences and causes. In our later commentaries, we use a threefold typology of commitment as an organizing framework to explain continuity in Sam’s criminal career.
Our use of this threefold organizing framework of commitment combines two traditions in criminology in the usage of commitment. The first is the well-known prominence of commitment as a stake in conformity in social control theories (see Bernard 1987), such as in the work or Jackson Toby, Travis Hirschi, and Robert Sampson and John Laub. The second tradition comes from the symbolic interactionist and labeling tradition’s longstanding attention to the study of deviance, where commitment is viewed as stakes or investments in deviant pursuits, as in the work of Edwin Lemert, Howard Becker, Erving Goff man, Robert Stebbins, Daniel Glaser, and others.
Thus, commitment is a generic concept that applies to both crime and conventional activity. For example, if someone has a reputation and a satisfying self-concept as a “religious person” or a “respectable businessperson,” that person knows that he or she places these in jeopardy by engaging in crime. Likewise, if someone has a reputation as a “decent thief” or “tough guy,” he jeopardizes these should he abandon theft or toughness. Both a criminal and a conforming life generate potential losses if they are abandonded.
This threefold typology specifies structural, personal, and moral types of commitment, and combines both “objective” or external factors and “subjective” or internal factors that produce continuity in behavior over time. We use this framework as a conceptual tool for grappling with issues of persistence, desistance, or partial desistance in crime across the life course. Our use of this commitment framework aims to explain pathways out of or not out of crime, or perhaps pathways into lesser criminal roles (as a example of the kind of pathways between criminal roles we are talking about, see Lemert 1951:336-37). Structural, personal, and moral commitments are also key for understanding turning points in the life course.
Life course perspectives, which have become very popular today, involve the idea of pathways into and out of crime, emphasizing biographical elements, life course trajectories, turning points, and developmental sequences (e.g., Sampson and Laub 1993; Benson 2002). The perspectives may draw on the notion of “career” to chart the onset (e.g., early- versus late-starters) and persistence (e.g., deepening commitments to deviant identities and activities), as well as pathways to desistance. Proponents claim that the life course perspective departs from earlier criminology in (1) focusing on the relationship between age and crime; (2) focusing on the relationship between prior and future criminal activity; and (3) adopting a process versus static orientation in focusing on the dynamics of offending over age. However, these concerns were also central to the work of more traditional scholars in criminology and sociology, such as Edwin Lemert (1951, 1967), Howard Becker (1963), Donald Cressey (1953), James Inciardi (1975), John Lofland (1969), Daniel Glaser (1972), Robert Pras (Prus and Sharper 1977), and Patti and Peter Adler (1983).
Furthermore, differential association/social learning theory is very much a processual, life-course-oriented perspective, although Sutherland did not systematize that perspective in the way that life course theorists do today. Mat-sueda and Heimer (1997), for example, describe how key emphases of differential association/social learning, such as self concepts and attitudes are dynamic across the life course. That is, the perspective is clearly compatible with the notion that criminal propensity changes—sometimes dramatically— over the life course. On the other hand, the kind of differential association/social learning perspective we describe here is also consistent with the possibility of stable or enduring criminal propensity. Ulmer and Spencer (1999) point out how key themes of differential association/social learning theory, such as definitions, skills, self-concepts, commitments, and rewards can produce both change and stability in criminal propensity over the life course.
However, Confessions also illustrates some important limitations to life course concepts as they are usually used in the criminology literature. First, they tend to imply much more precision and orderliness in criminal careers than is empirically recognizable. Second, they tend to assume greater differences between offenders and nonoffenders, between persistent and intermittent or occasional offenders, and between early starters and late starters than is plausible. Both of these features of how life course concepts are often used may lock us into conceptual boxes that may mask the variability and complexity of criminal offending and careers. In particular, Confessions problematizes concepts like “life-course-persistent offender” and what characteristics they are supposed to have.
We also recognize that people may develop relatively stable personality characteristics that emerge by way of dispositions and childhood experiences (priority). This can clearly be seen in the life of Sam Goodman, who exhibits some very stable personality features. For example, Sam was always striving and hard-working, loved to make money for the sake of making money, “enjoyed pulling something,” and was gregarious and socially perceptive. We would include such stable personality characteristics as a part of the “subjective acceptability” of crime. Lemert (1951:85-86) referred to the “internal structuring of personality” as an important aspect of the “internal limits” on deviant behavior. Lemert put it this way:
At any given point in the personality development of an individual there is a definable set of alternative roles which are subjectively congenial to him. . . . This subjectively delimited area of choice may lie within the range of the external limits or it may fall outside, and while the external limits may be comparable for different persons, the internal limits tend to be much more variable. Aspirations to status and role arise within the scope of the internal limits; likewise, social pressures upon the individual to accept certain roles and status which fall beyond the internal limits will he resisted, circumvented, selected out, and rejected, (ibid.:86, emphasis added)
Symbolic interactionism has long emphasized that one’s social self is as stable as the relationships within which a person is embedded (see Strauss 1969). While people’s self-concepts are certainly never static, they do often exhibit enough stability for scholars to posit the existence of a “core self with persistent characteristics. Furthermore, dramatic self-change does occur, but it is relatively rare (Strauss 1969; Athens 1995). Stability of self-concept is therefore a key aspect of subjective acceptability of crime and internal limits, and a source of stable criminal propensity.
Differential association and labeling theory also have a symbiotic relationship with one another. One basic contention of labeling theory is that sanctions against crime or deviance can inadvertently contribute to continuity in deviant activity and careers. This occurs in that sanctions can potentially (1) restrict opportunities for conventional employment and relationships, (2) open up illegitimate opportunities and access to deviant networks or subcultures, (3) lead to the development of deviant identities and a sense of estrangement from conventional society (Lemert 1951; Lofland 1969; Braithwaite 1989; Ulmer 1994). In particular, Braithwaite has developed the notion of reintegrative shaming, and contrasted it with stigmatizing processes that exclude and alienate the deviant rather than reintegrate him or her. The other contention of labeling theory is an emphasis on careers and process, in particular the notion that the original causes of criminal behavior may not be the same as the eventual causes that reproduce or sustain criminal behavior or, as Becker (1963) says, the deviant behavior in time produces its own set of deviant motivations.
We also recognize the value of labeling theory’s and more generally symbolic interactionism’s situational approaches to crime and deviance, and their emphasis on the interplay of human agency with internal and external constraints. The idea that people are endowed with choice and agency within atti-tudinal limits and external constraints has always been central to symbolic interactionism (Maines 2001). Furthermore, all human behavior takes place in situations of some kind. It is an interactionist truism that larger-scale contexts set the conditions for situations. Situations (and crucially, how they are defined) set conditions for action and interaction. In turn, people confront these situations and exercise agency within them, as they define those situations, make choices, and act (see Ulmer and Spencer 1999). The importance of agency, sit-uational definitions, and emergent contingencies, as well as processes of “drift” into crime, can be seen throughout Sam Goodman’s career.
Sutherland’s earlier treatments of differential association have been criticized for ignoring the situational level of analysis, but it is not incompatible with labeling theory’s more situational focus, and the situational level of analysis has also been incorporated into social learning theory by Akers. The long tradition of interactionist research on crime and deviance is based on the following assumptions (see Lemert 1951,1972; Becker 1963; Strauss 1993; Best and Luckenbill 1994):
Situational constraints and opportunities make different types of action more or less likely, and actors’ biographies and prior repertoires of action affect the definitions of situations they construct. Situational and biographical constraints can influence people’s definitions and actions both with and without their awareness of those constraints.
Situational contexts are set by, and actor’s biographies are located within, larger arrangements of social structure and culture.
Lemert’s cornerstone formulations of labeling theory emphasized situational contingencies, drift, and adjustment. For example:
Much human behavior is situationally oriented and geared to meeting the many and shifting claims which others make upon them. The loose structuring and swiftly changing facade and content of modem social situations frequently make it difficult to decide which means will ensure ends sought. Often choice is a compromise between what is sought and what can be sought. . . . Each of such actions has its consequences and rationale and leaves a residual basis for possible future action depending on the problems solved or the new problems brought to life. (1967: 51-52, emphasis added)
Another major theoretical issue that is central to our examination of Sam Goodman’s career is the nature of criminal enterprise. By criminal enterprise, we mean “business” crimes pursued on a more or less sustained basis for money. Criminal enterprise refers mainly to that slice of crime and underworld that relies on “business practices,” involves ongoing criminal ventures, and tends more toward market offenses involving consensual exchanges between providers, suppliers, sellers, and customers than toward predatory crimes, like ordinary forms of theft and hustling. Enterprise crime typically involves more supply-related offenses like fencing, bookmaking, loansharking, smuggling, drug dealing, and sex peddling. Obviously, more sustained and organized forms of burglary, auto theft, fraud, etc. (e.g., theft or fraud rings), can shade into the criminal enterprise and market categories.
We especially draw attention to the contours of criminal enterprise and the underworld as a “social world” or “field.” Confessions depicts the underworld as what Anselm Strauss (1993) called a “social world” of interaction, communication, and (to some extent) shared meaning. In other words, we see the underworld as a “field” of mutually recognized goals and organized striving, to paraphrase Pierre Bourdieu (1977; see also Martin 2003). Confessions in many ways maps the field of the underworld of criminal enterprise as a social arena involving both a moral sphere and negotiable realm of opportunities and relations for economic or social achievement. In later chapters of this book, we elucidate the social organization both of burglary and of fencing stolen goods, the criminal social capital necessary for successful criminal enterprise, the importance of criminal networks, the stratification or “pecking order” of the underworld, and the nature of localized organized crime networks.
Sam’s criminal activity illustrates the nature of serious crime as work and business, and the similarities and differences between conventional and criminal enterprise. We believe a major contribution of Confessions is that it provides a unique and rare glimpse into the social world of criminal enterprise, and enhances our understanding of this field and its ordering. In addition, the book illustrates how conventional and criminal worlds very often overlap both in their social organization and in their normative codes. By implication, Sam and perhaps all of us face competing moral systems because of the differing fields and social worlds we participate in.
As participants in this field, Sam Goodman and his associates are uniquely suited to inform us about their social world, giving us a glimpse into a lifestyle, philosophy, and pattern of living ordinarily obscured from our vision. His case study is a statement about one offender’s long-standing involvement in crime as well as a narrative about a wide variety of criminal actors, small-timers as well as big-timers.
We believe our theoretical arguments about criminal social capital, criminal enterprise as a social world, and the social organization of that world make contributions to the criminology literature that are at least equal to our contributions to understanding criminal careers. Furthermore, the two themes are closely related. We elaborate these arguments about criminal enterprise in our commentaries in Chapters 5, 7 and 9 as well as in Chapters 13 and 15. Sam Goodman’s life history reveals crime and criminal careers not so much as discrete events or series of events, but as a process that can be marked by amplification spirals, shifts, and waxing and waning commitments to crime and criminal others. In turn, all of his activities are contextualized by the field of criminal enterprise and by the interplay between criminal and conventional social worlds. It is to Sam’s own narratives that we now turn.
1. That lack of more than “lip service” about the role of criminal opportunity in crime production is shown in the well-regarded text, Theoretical Criminology (Void, Bernard, and Snipes 1998). The authors’ list of characteristics or risk factors for crime as drawn from their review of criminology theory and research does not include criminal opportunity.
2. Steffensmeier’s earlier treatments (1978; 1980; 1983, 1986) drew heavily on the works of Lemert (1951) and Lofland (1969) and, more recently, on the writings of Prus (Prus and Sharper 1977; Prus and Irini 1980), Cullen (1983), Hagan and McCarthy (1997), Naylor (2003), Hochstetler (2001) Ruggiero (2000), and Trem-blay (1993). Some of the ideas delineated here are also compatible with routine activities theory. The latter focuses mainly on (a) availability and vulnerability of suitable targets for theft and hustling such as unguarded places and easy-prey victims and (b) how these targets vary across space and are subject to change in response to larger social and economic developments (Felson 1998). While beyond the scope of Confessions, we believe that ideas from routine activities theory could be used to help flesh out the criminal opportunity perspective we present here.
3. We thank Miles Harer for suggesting this point.
4. Some other distinctions of access to criminal opportunities also may be useful such as whether the modus operandi involves force, fraud, or both, or whether the victimization is consensual and involves relatively free exchanges between partici-pants; and whether the opportunities center around the commission of predatory or market offenses (see Naylor 2003). Predatory offenses represent appropriative crimes that lack “fair market value” (ibid.:84) such as robbery, burglary, auto theft, passing bad checks, identity theft, defrauding the government, and a variety of other thefts and hustles. Market offenses involve consensual exchanges between customers, producers, sellers, and perhaps protectors. Besides fencing, market offenses include smuggling, illegal gambling, loansharking, drug dealing, gun dealing, prostitution, extortion, bribery, and other supply-related and “racketeering” offenses. Our notion of criminal enterprise (see below) mainly encompasses the types of crime that might fit into market category, while also including more long-term and businesslike involvements in theft and hustling.