Rewards and Rationales of Crime, and Images of Criminals
Sam’s final narrative is drawn mostly from the final weekend of interviews before his death. Sam’s comments really “zero in” on appraising his life, his points of pride and regrets, his moral apologia, his sources of emotional pain, and his imminent death.
In Chapters 3,11 and elsewhere, we have discussed structural, personal, and moral commitment to crime. In this commentary, we describe Sam’s rewards, preferences, identities, and positive attitudes connected to crime, and how they built strong personal commitments to stealing, fencing, and hustling. Then, we discuss Sam’s moral apologia for his actions, some elements of which invoke moral commitment to crime while others implicate sources of personal commitment.
Sam deploys well-developed accounts and neutralizations (Sykes and Matza 1957) to rationalize his crime. While some might see this apologia as a set of convenient excuses, it does show that Sam had a conscience. Sam does have a “moral code,” he does want respectability, and he does respond to the powerful pressures for conformity that inhere in the larger society. As a result of his criminality, though, he experiences a kind of marginality.
Sam’s guilt depends on the moral field of reference. Like people more generally, Sam’s morality and “conscience” vary relative to differing moral spheres in which he is embedded, or the different fields in which one is seeking economic and social achievement and recognition. For example, Sam’s theft and hustling activities are defined as illegal and dysfunctional by the larger society. To the entrepreneur of crime and vice, however, his normative reference group is not the larger society but is (mainly) the blue-collar, working-class community and his own network in crime, and so his criminal activities are positively defined.
Sam Goodman enjoyed several different kinds of rewards from burglary and, later, fencing. These rewards continued to entice him until he was too sick to work. Sam felt the “seductions of crime” (Katz 1988) strongly. In Chapters 3 and 11, we discussed three types of commitment to crime and conformity— structural, personal, and moral. Crime brought Sam rewards, positive emotions and attitudes, preferences, and valued identities, which in turn built for him a strong personal commitment to his criminal activities. In fact, one cannot understand the continuity and longevity of Sam’s criminal career without understanding the degree to which Sam was personally invested in the social world of criminal enterprise, and found it personally rewarding. While Sam also enjoyed the rewards of his legitimate work and was personally invested in it, Sam’s life and identity were strongly molded around fencing, and his financial and social well-being were heavily dependent on it. Sam’s attachment to fencing was built up by favorable definitions of the experience that he acquired from others (as many of the previous chapters show), and from the action itself.
Thus, we see in Sam what is a more generic process. One becomes per-sonally committed to lines of action to the extent that: (1) one has received rewards (material, cognitive, or emotional) from the activity itself in the past, (2) one has previously enjoyed associating with the others with whom one participates in the activity, and/or (3) one received self-validation from the identities or roles one enacts in the activity. In this way, a person develops preferences for repeated involvement in lines of activity.
Most of Sam’s personal commitment to crime came from positive attitudes toward his criminal activities themselves. Some of these positive attitudes take the form of Sam’s moral apologia for crime, which we discuss below. However, the first and foremost attraction of theft and criminal enterprise for Sam was the money—both having it and the fun of making it. One could say that money was perhaps the central preoccupation of Sam’s life. Until he got sick, most of his time and energy was spent making, and spending, money. When asked why he did what he did, he always quickly answered something like, “What do you mean, why did I do it? Because it was good money!” Whether it was about burglary or fencing, he could talk at great length about the business end of the activity—angles and techniques for maximizing his profit. Sam enjoyed making even trivial amounts of money, as Steelbeams once related:
This is hard to believe, but some Sunday mornings Sam would drive around town, hit all the Hope Rescue Mission boxes. Check to see what people threw away. Like an old radio, TV and that. He’d fiddle with it and get it working, sell it for $5, $10 in his store .. . What the fuck would he make from this? No, it was just the idea of making a buck, pulling something. He got a bang out of it.
Sam also loved “getting over on somebody.” Jesse described this tendency when he said, “Sam’s gotta always think he’s pulling something. I think that’s the only way he’s happy in life. That he’s doing somebody in” (cited in The Fence:221). This view was shared by other associates of Sam, some of whom would add “but couldn’t get mad at him cause he was a good guy in other ways.”
These aspects of Sam’s “working personality” were partly carryovers from his childhood and adolescence, when he had to hustle for himself (or do without), and his quick realization that he was pretty good at this. In effect, Sam never lost that early reinforcement and satisfaction (partly survival) of “hustling to make a buck.”
Sam also loved spending money. Sam’s associates like Rocky, Steelbeams, and Jesse talked often about Sam’s appetite for relatively expensive fun, such as “womanizing” and gambling, for buying things he didn’t need, and being a “good joe” or “good sport” who spent money on others and paid his help well. Sam’s friend Jesse once said, “Sam don’t think nothing about a buck. I mean Sam can go through money, geez, like Sherman going through Georgia” (cited in The Fence:221). Even at his death, one thing he regretted was that he didn’t make and save more money, that as he got older and mellowed, he passed up some opportunities to score really big.
On the surface, it might seem that Sam was similar to lower-prestige property criminals and drug dealers described in the research literature (e.g., Shover 1996; Tunnell 2000; Jacobs 1999), who adopt a “life is a big party” attitude, and crime fulfills the need for money to keep the party going. Sam was different, though, from these lower-prestige property offenders in some key respects. Sam was quite skilled at what he did, capable of very hard work, self-discipline, and delayed gratification, and possessed of “people skills.” These were crucial sources of his prosperity. Sam might have liked to have a good time, but he also was capable of putting his nose to the grindstone.
Second, Sam’s skills as a burglar and fence were also a source of rewards. Typically, one enjoys what one is good at. Sam was successful at both burglary and fencing, but he especially enjoyed the latter. Sam enjoyed the rough and tumble of illicit business as a kind of competitive play as he matched wits with others, such as thieves, buyers, and police. At the height of his career, he was quite a successful illegal entrepreneur, and in even his later “moonlighting” phase, he enjoyed being an “old head” and often expressed the wish that he could pass on all his criminal skill and knowledge to a solid, promising younger man.
Third, Sam was drawn to the excitement and action of making money from crime. The wheeling and dealing of fencing, the risk of getting caught, the possibility of a really big deal, were all sources of stress and tension, but also excitement. As Sam said in The Fence, “In different ways, there’s a challenge in fencing that in truth I could say I liked” (p. 225). At times in Sam’s narrative of his later life, one of the things he seemed to miss was this very excitement, that “little kick you need once in awhile.” The desire for excitement seemed to be one thing, along with the money, of course, that could draw him back into crime in his moonlighting phase.
Fourth, not only is fencing interesting and challenging, it also allows a lot of liberty to make decisions about one’s own and others’ working conditions and activities. Sam could set his own and others’ agendas, in both his store and his later business. Sam enjoyed both the autonomy and the responsibility of running a fencing operation. He liked being his own boss and not having to work within the structure and boredom of ordinary employment.
Personal commitment to crime for Sam also came from associations with and mutually positive attitudes toward others in the underworld. Sam enjoyed having a reputation as a player, a “big shot,” especially at the height of his career. He enjoyed congenial relationships with employees, other legitimate and illicit businesspeople, hangers-on and wanna-bes, and active and retired thieves who hung out with him at bars, the gambling club, and his businesses. He also found great satisfaction in the feelings of camaraderie and shared interests with other dealers in stolen goods, like Louie, Woody, or Angelo. He especially loved and was proud of being included in the gambling club, and rubbing shoulders with local organized-crime players, as described in a previous chapter. These local organized-crime elites were also role models for Sam, and he aspired to be more like them, at least in some ways. In particular, he admired their money, prestige, and power.
Sam’s involvement in fencing was not only the medium for the formation and ranking of his social relationships in general, but served as the source of the majority of the satisfying relationships that he had. Sam willingly embedded himself in the satisfying relationships and mutual obligations to thieves, buyers, dealers, and organized-crime elites, and these were a major source of the continuity and longevity of his criminal career.
One important point we emphasize is that this nature of Sam’s social world and its relationship to his criminality does not fit the picture of social ties between criminals painted by theorists like Travis Hirschi (1969; Gott-fredson and Hirschi 1990), Ruth Kornhauser (1978), and their followers. These scholars argue that criminals lack self- and/or social control, and therefore are unlikely to form relationships of significant durability and strength, and this is especially said to be true of relationships between criminals. Control theorists (whether they emphasize self- or social control) tend to see relationships between criminals as “cold and brittle” (Hirschi 1969). Sam’s significant criminal ties were neither cold nor brittle, and they provided an important set of rewards and a source of his personal commitment to crime.
Finally, a key source of personal commitment to crime for Sam was that his self-concept was wrapped up in his criminal identity. It is true that Sam’s self-definition presents some contradictions and ambivalence (something that is probably true of many people). On one hand, Sam was aware of the marginal-ity and labeling effects of being an ex-con. In the last years before his death he preferred to think of himself as a mostly legitimate businessman (which, by that time, was true). At the end of his life, he noted that he did not want the ordinary citizen to see him as a “crook” or at least as “not just a crook.” Of course, the kind of “crook” mattered quite a bit. Sam didn’t mind being called a “good burglar,” a “wheeler-dealer,” or a “con man” in relation to his fencing activities. Sam thought of himself as a good thief and, later, a successful fence, and enjoyed being a wheeler-dealer and an underworld player. Over the whole course of his life, these were Sam’s most salient identities by which he defined and evaluated himself.
Overall, Sam was a man remarkably comfortable in his own skin. He looked at himself, and felt that he was pretty much what he had worked at being, though he sometimes wished he had been an even bigger or more successful criminal entrepreneur. “If I had to start life all over, I would be a fence. ‘Cause it was really beautiful,” he said in The Fence (p. 233). He reiterated this at the end of his life when he said, “If I was to live life over, I would want to be a fence. Only get into it sooner. Or be a guy in the rackets, like an Angelo.” A good part of the reason for his comfort with his criminal identity was that he really did not consider himself a morally bad person, or at least no worse than anyone else, and in fact better than some.
Of course, Sam’s personal commitment to crime waxed and waned throughout the course of his life. The height of his personal commitment to crime was during the second phase of his career when he was a “big,” “wide-open” fence. His attitudes toward crime and other practitioners of crime and vice remained favorable in the third, “moonlighting” phase of his career, but he also moved toward more positive attitudes toward legitimate people and associations (for example, his employees, legitimate antique dealers, and other business people). Furthermore, the moonlighting phase of his career also saw some changes in Sam’s self-definition (e.g., “I’m not just a crook”) in his later years, as the narratives in Chapter 12 and the next chapter show. That is, Sam came to see himself mostly as a legitimate businessman who dabbled in crime.
How can a person like Sam, who spent most of his life committing serious property crimes, maintain that he is really a decent fellow after all? Below, we explore Sam’s moral duality.
In The Fence (pp. 237-256), Steffensmeier explained Sam Goodman’s apologia pro vita sua, or his moral rationales for his burglary and fencing career. At the time of the research conducted for The Fence, Sam did not spend a lot of time on a day-to-day basis reflecting on the morality or lack thereof of his criminal actions. Even so, when Steffensmeier probed Sam on the subject, Sam was able to articulate many offense-specific excuses, justifications, and rationalizations for why he “wasn’t that bad.”
At the end of his life, Sam had more time and motivation to further develop and elaborate his apologia, as his final narrative shows. Many of the elements of Sam’s moral universe serve as sources of personal commitment to crime, functioning as action-specific attitudes or definitions of situations that defined his criminality in a favorable rather than a negative light. In other words, Sam’s moral themes and neutralizations, which we describe below, are actually a subset of attitudes favorable to lines of action, a major source of Sam’s personal commitment to crime.
Sociologically, these justifications, etc., are known as “vocabularies of motive” (Mills 1940). Vocabularies of motive are rhetoric that one uses to rationalize or justify one’s violations of social norms to others and, equally importantly, to oneself. In the context of Sam’s narratives here and in The Fence, his use of these vocabularies of motive served as accounts (Scott and Lyman 1968) more than as neutralizations (Sykes and Matza 1957). The difference between neutralizations and accounts is that neutralizations are deployed before norm violations occur, while accounts are articulated after violations occur (which is the case with Sam’s narratives here). However, the forms of the justifying rhetoric, or “techniques” as Sykes and Matza (1957) refer to them, are similar in both cases. Also in both cases, people use these to justify the behavior in an attempt to ward off moral censure from others and guilt from within oneself (with varying degrees of success). Importantly, Sam’s apologia indicates that he did in fact have a conscience—one must care about moral norms, at least at some level, for accounts to be necessary in the first place. If one does not care about the morality of one’s actions, then one does not need to justify them.
Below, we have listed seven key themes of Sam’s moral system or apologia. Sam especially emphasized the first four:
1. “The business world don’t care how you make a buck, just as long as you make it.” Sam had a kind of social-Darwinist worldview in which he saw life as characterized by competitiveness, illegal behavior, and corruption, all of which were tolerated and often encouraged. Such behavior can be found especially in the “business” and “political” sectors of society. Offenders like Sam are seeking to achieve their success in a manner not unlike these “other people.”
2. Relatedly, there is a fine line between the legitimate and illegitimate. Sam also believed strongly that most people have “larceny in the heart,” and said things like, “Who isn’t on the take at least a little? Even ‘the do-gooders’ will chisel if they are in a pinch.”
3. Sam and associates like Jesse strongly believed in the inevitability of theft. As Jesse put it: “Holy Christ, you have people that have property or money, and you have people that wanna take it. I don’t care what kind of jail they put up, you’re gonna have so many thieves. Same as there’s always plumbers, electricians, carpenters, and teachers like yourself. It’s been that way since time began and that is going to be until time ends. You are always gonna have thieves.” Sam nodded his approval as Jesse said this. Since “you are always gonna have thieves,” the thief role is acceptable because it reflects the natural order of things. Jesse and Sam displayed a disbelief that any intelligent person could see it otherwise.
To reinforce his conclusion, Jesse (if prodded further) would note the universal existence of related phenomena like prostitution and war: that society has always had and hence always will have prostitutes and Johns, or those who plunder and those trying to keep from being plundered.
4. As we elaborate later, “life as a ledger” is a central theme in Sam’s assessment (especially as the curtain winds down on his life). Sam believed that people’s behavior is a mix of good and bad. As Sam sees it, the good he did outweighed the bad. “Yes, I have done some rank shit, but have done a lot of good too.” So, Sam sees himself on balance as a “morally okay” guy.
5. Sam had an abiding belief in a conception of manhood in which “you do what you have to do get by, to do okay.” In this conception of masculinity, being a man meant not having to depend on others, to keep up with or do better than others in life’s competitions, and “to live your life, not somebody else’s.”
6. Sam recognized the ideal nature of public morality, and its inapplicability when applied to concrete situations and “real people” (we expand on this later). That is, society’s standards for merit and respectabilities are seen as exceeding the capabilities of many of its members (see also Suttles 1968).
7. On the other hand, there is also in Sam a recognition (and even some admiration) for people who are highly w/zlikely to break the law because they see the law or rale as a moral obligation. This is seen in the next chapter in his evaluations of his domestic partner Wanda, as well as of Norm, his antique dealer friend.1
We also can group Sam’s accounts according to several of the forms of neutralizations (rhetoric used to excuse a deviant act prior to its commission) and accounts (rhetoric to excuse a deviant act after its commission) as described by Sykes and Matza (1957), Scott and Lyman (1968), and Klockars (1974): denial of injury, denial of the victim, condemning the condemners, denial of responsibility, and the “metaphor of the ledger.” These neutralizations and accounts are nourished by subterranean values of the larger society (especially the blue-collar working class) and also are institutionalized features of the underworld.2
Sam’s apologia is complex, however, and many of these themes interweave and mutually support each other. His apologia also reminds us of JVlordechai Nisan’s point that “people do not aspire to be saints” but allow themselves leeway “to deviate from the right course” in making moral choices (Nisan and Horenczyk 1990:29; see also Nisan 1991). In deciding whether to violate a specific rale or law, individuals balance moral considerations against non-moral considerations such as financial pressures, personal crises, or unusual opportunities. Nisan’s emphasis parallels that of the conception of neutralization and accounts. That is, law violators are not necessarily improperly socialized, nor do they necessarily have a predisposition for rule breaking. Nor do people break the law necessarily because of a lack of moral knowledge or a distorted view of right or wrong, or because of an inability to resist temptation.
Denial of injury and denial of the victim are evident in a variety of Sam’s accounts both here and in The Fence. Sam explains that fencing stolen goods really did not harm people directly—rather, his fencing role occurred after the victims (who had their property stolen) had already been harmed. The fence is simply putting a bad situation to good use. It is the thief who is doing the actually victimizing. He also notes that there are much worse crimes than fencing, such as robbery, drug dealing, rape, and child abuse.
Furthermore, in Sam’s view, fencing is not a very serious crime because it causes little injury to the victims. He supposes that they are usually individuals or businesses that can afford the loss, and will simply recover losses from insurance or tax write-offs. “I don’t feel I hurt any little people ‘cause most of the stuff did come out of business places and big places, which were insurance write-offs and which they will many times mark it double what it was,” Sam explained in The Fence (p. 241). In that case, Sam saw himself as really stealing from insurance companies or the government, whom Sam saw as deserving victims since they cheated others anyway.
This latter theme shades into denial of the victim—that is, Sam believes the victims probably engage in dishonest activity themselves. Sam also denies the victim when he often describes how “dumb” people are, how they do foolish things that make them easy targets for theft or being conned. Such “suckers” are fair game to Sam.
Sam did admit that not all victim losses were insignificant, and that some victims might not be deserving. He explains this by observing that, in some instances, he arranged for the stolen property to be returned. Sam described a situation like this in the current narrative, where he anonymously returned a stolen gun of sentimental value.
Denial of responsibility is an evident theme in Sam’s rhetoric, and is related to denial of injury. Sam reasons that theft and fencing take place regardless of whether Sam participates or not, so he might as well profit from it. If he did not buy a thief’s stolen goods, someone else would. In The Fence, Sam turned the old saying, “If there were no fences, then there would be no thieves,” on its head. He always maintained that fences do not cause goods to be stolen. As a former burglar himself who saw the issue from the other side, he found the notion that fences are responsible for theft preposterous. He knows that thieves steal regardless of what fences want or do not want, and that most fences offer little direction or support for thieves. To Sam, the fence-thief relationship is not a conspiracy, but simply a transaction. As Sam says in The Fence, “Tell me this: why did I do all that time in the penitentiary for the burglary? I didn’t hear no judge say, ‘Sammy, you can go free ‘cause your fence made you do it’“(p. 255).
Condemning the condemners is also a recognizable but complex theme in Sam’s apologia. Sam’s justifications here and in The Fence are full of themes like “Everyone does it,” “Honesty is relative,” and “Everyone has -some larceny in them.” In effect, Sam offers a claim of “normality.” Sam emphasizes the contradictions between the world as it is and the world as it should be, and observes that others in society fail to live up to society’s ideals. Sam favorably compares himself with others, whom he sees as dishonest and deviant as himself, if not more so. In The Fence and here, he especially singles out those otherwise law-abiding citizens and businesspeople who knowingly buy stolen goods from him. “They are as guilty as the ones who steal,” he says. He also has little good to say about police, many of whom he views as crooked and corrupt. As he says, “The cops I have known in my life were always looking for a handout. There are some very crooked cops who have pulled a lotta rank shit.”
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Sam sees as lopsided the old observation: “If there were no Receivers there would be no Thieves—Deprive a Thief of his sale and ready market for his goods and he is undone” (Colquhon 1800:289). Sam instead believes (somewhat tongue in cheek) that if there were no thieves, no bargain-hunting private citizens, no dishonest businesspeople, and no corrupt police, there would be no fences.
He also deflects moral censure and perhaps guilt by taking note of others in society who lie, cheat, con, and chisel, such as “TV preachers” and significantly, the tobacco companies who push and peddle the addictive cigarettes that got him hooked and led to his cancer. “They are the ones that ought to be locked up,” he says. Sam claims that his actions are relatively acceptable compared to others, as in, “There are others worse than me.”
Finally, Sam frequently deploys the metaphor of the ledger (Klockars 1974). The ledger refers to the balance sheet of good and bad acts. If one’s bad acts are balanced by good ones, then one is not so deserving of condemnation. He points out, “I done a lot of wrong, but I done a lot of good, too.” Sam could go on and on about good deals he gave people, charities he donated to, friends and acquaintances he helped out in some way or another. He also took pride in the fact that his store and later his furniture/antiques shop employed many people, giving them chances to prosper that they would not have had were it not for Sam. Most importantly, Sam often pointed to his generosity and kindness to children as proof that he was really “not that bad a guy.” Sam (and also those who knew him) pointed out that he often gave kids free toys from his store, especially poor kids and he would take neighborhood kids out for ice cream or to baseball games. “I was always tops with kids,” he said.
Sam’s moral code is a practical morality rather than an abstract, ideal one. The moral dilemmas of theft, conning, and illicit business activities were not abstractions whose morality was to be debated. Instead, they were realities of life, a significant aspect of Sam’s social world. One copes with everyday life in terms of the concrete rather than the abstract or hypothetical. Sam does not so much approve of theft and hustling in the abstract, but he is easily able to discover reasons for them as a way of responding to the context of one’s everyday life. Thus, he sees theft and criminal enterprise as acceptable ways to meet subsistence needs, or else to have a standard of living comparable to what most people in the community enjoy.
Moral commitment is a difficult, and to some extent counterintuitive, concept to apply to crime (Ulmer 2000:324-325). Johnson (1991) originally used moral commitment in the context of relationships, where, for example, one stays in an unhappy marriage out of a sense of general or specific moral obligation. Nonetheless, we believe the concept has some usefulness for examining continuity in criminal behavior, and that more research and theorizing is needed on the notion of moral commitment to crime.
Recall from Chapter 11 that moral commitment involves internal constraint, and has three sources. First, it flows from action-specific norms that discourage the termination of a line of action once involved in it. This source does not refer to individuals’ attitudes or beliefs about the moral Tightness or wrongness per se of a given line of action. Such attitudes or beliefs function to define actions in a positive way, and are thus a source of personal commitment (as we describe above with Sam’s apologia). Rather, this source of moral commitment refers to norms that impose constraints against quitting a specific activity after becoming involved in it. The second source of moral commitment is the extent to which people see themselves as having moral obligations to specific others with whom they are involved in lines of action. The final source of moral commitment involves the extent to which one generally values consistency in one’s own action.
As we have seen in Sam’s discussions of the underworld code, embedded-ness in some kinds of criminal networks can entail learning action-specific norms, such as those emphasizing dependability, trustworthiness, loyalty, and a sense of moral obligation to other members. Such codes of conduct and informal rules of obligation are especially important in coordinating and safeguarding activities among networks of higher status and perhaps even mid-level thieves and criminal entrepreneurs. Furthermore, as Sam says in dozens of ways throughout this book, a reputation for dependability and for not letting others down, for recognizing obligations to associates by keeping one’s mouth shut when one gets in trouble, and an ability to keep one’s word are all prized attributes in criminal enterprise. Sam captures the importance of this kind of dependability and trustworthiness, which can be seen as involving moral commitment to crime through action-specific norms and perceived obligations to others:
Thieves have to have confidence in each other. That’s where heart comes in, too. That’s when you’re going to have to depend on a person. Not have a guy that’s going to get all shitty and ran out, and he gets away and you get popped. That’s part of being trustworthy, too. Being dependable. You got to know the man’s on your back all the time.
In addition, general consistency values figured into Sam’s moral commitment to crime. Sam believed that one should finish what one starts, and that a person should not quit an endeavor just because the going gets tough or the work gets hard. For Sam, to some extent these beliefs applied to theft and criminal enterprise. He spoke with pride about how hard he worked at his criminal activities and adversities he overcame, and he took pride in his “being solid” when the going got tough. He had disdain for those in the criminal world who did not show such persistence in the face of hard work or adversity.
Recall our discussion and Sam’s narratives about the underworld code in Chapters 13 and 14, as well the discussions of trust and character in Chapters 9 and 10. Believing in and living up to consistency norms and interpersonal obligations was a big part of what Sam meant by “being solid,” and part of what he meant by having “heart.” By implication, this means that moral commitment to crime is a form of criminal social capital that encompasses such attributes as heart, solidness, trustworthiness, and character. Furthermore, this implies that a significant portion of the underworld code concerns sources of moral commitment to crime, even though the extent to which underworld participants learn and follow this code varies (see Chapters 13 and 17). Further research should explore the notion that sources of moral commitment are forms of criminal social capital that increase the potential longevity and success of criminal enterprise.
Our knowledge of criminal careers and chronic offending, and of patterns of criminal behavior and organization, is at best incomplete. Confessions is, to be sure, not entirely an unimpeachable source as well. It relies largely on the assessments of a veteran criminal entrepreneur and, interconnectedly, on the researchers’ first- and secondhand knowledge of a network of associated criminal entrepreneurs, some with short but others with long criminal careers. This is both a strength and a weakness. That said, it is still useful to extract all the insights we can from this material about the nature of crime and criminals, and how this squares with scholarly and popular depictions of them.
Imagery matters. The cultural and intellectual imagery we have about a phenomenon or a category of people structures and delimits the ways we can think about that phenomenon or those people. Overall, what we see is that conceptual and moral distinctions between crime, criminals, and conventionality are muddier and messier than current discussions often acknowledge.
Sam Goodman is an exemplar of the duality of human nature. On one hand, he engaged in a lifelong career of stealing, fencing, and racketeering. As he repeatedly pointed out, property crime was his business, and he derived considerable material, social, and psychological rewards from making money from crime. On the other hand, Sam’s life very much challenges the notion that “career criminals” are morally corrupt, they have been corrupt all their lives, they will always be corrupt, and they are corrupt in all areas of their life. This is a picture of career criminality that is widely held by the public, and it is implicitly or explicitly espoused by some types of criminological theories.
We do not for a moment romanticize Sam’s activities. Sam did indeed “pull a lot of rank shit/’ as he says. However, people are not one-dimensional. Sam was both immoral and moral, and the morality of his conduct did concern him. Sam was deviant in his choice of livelihood, but he was conventional in a variety of other ways. Put differently, Sam “crawled through windows” to burglarize businesses and homes, and he sold stolen antiques, televisions, or furniture, but he also paid his employees well and you could also trust him to watch your children.
As is true of most case studies of criminal offenders, one can find in Sam’s life evidence supporting almost any framework or theory of crime causation. Depending on one’s lens (and one’s moral or political stance), one observer might see one factor as decisively causal, while another observer might see a different one. For example, one could see “faulty parenting” (a single mother, an unfair stepfather) in Sam’s biography as the cause of his lifelong behavior, in support of self-control theory (and to some extent social learning theory). To do so, in our view, would be a gross oversimplification of Sam’s criminal career.
We find that some criminological perspectives view criminals either through narrow lenses or moralistic lenses, or both. Some perspectives heavily emphasize socioeconomic disadvantage as the key cause of crime, and focus almost exclusively on street crimes of the urban underclass. Other perspectives view criminality through the lens of individual pathology or deficit. In fact, some observers seem as interested in morally condemning and stigmatizing criminal offenders as in explaining their behavior (e.g., Wilson and Hermstein 1985; Delisi 2003). The underlying moral stance is itself an allegiance to an idea of criminality that separates saints from sinners, and places a clear boundary between criminals and the rest of us (see Weisburd and Waring 2001:153). This view of criminality has been reinforced by scholars who have tried to identify what manifestly distinguishes criminals from others. Intentionally or otherwise, this view strongly tends to divorce crime from the fabric of society in which it is embedded.
Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) emphasize lifelong, stable self-control deficits as the major cause of crime—deficits caused by poor parenting and inadequate socialization. Moffitt (1997) emphasizes early onset maladjustment propelled by biological or cognitive deficits. Both of these approaches depict a particular image of the criminal landscape: criminals are bad or “antisocial” from childhood onward (or even already in the womb), they are bad in nearly every way, they are bad most of the time, and they will always be bad. We disagree with this as a general characterization of criminality. This image of human nature reflects more of a moral stance than a social scientific viewpoint with a sound empirical basis.
In our view, criminological perspectives that focus on individual deficit or maladjustment have a narrow view of the criminal landscape that ignores or fails to recognize that criminals are a heterogeneous lot. We would like to see more recognition of and research on the apparently great variation in the nature and task environments of crime, and the variation in the individual characteristics of practitioners of crime and vice. We do not doubt that some kinds of persistent, serious criminals fit the picture painted by Hirschi and Gottfredson’s self control theory or by Moffitt’s developmental perspective. These are the ones that Sam calls “losers, “ “misfits, “ and “fuck-ups” who “give criminals a bad name. “ We argue that there are many offenders—like Sam and his associates, as well as mafiosi, corrupt police, cartage thieves, ordinary joe blow citizens moonlighting at theft or hustling, semilegitimate business-people, and perhaps white-collar criminals—who probably do not fit this imagery. Most of these kinds of offenders are very understudied in criminology. Our point is that self-control theory and Moffitt’s developmental perspective provide very oversimplified imagery of crime and criminals, and thus should not be reified or overgeneralized.
Among the indicators or elements of low self control enumerated by Gottfred-son and Hirschi (1990) are risk-taking and impulsivity, insensitivity, being physical rather than mental, being nonverbal, and lacking capacity for deferred gratification and diligence. It strikes us that this list of characteristics is not social class neutral. That is, the markers of self control deficits are also markers of lower- or blue-collar working-class culture. According to Miller (1958), lower-class culture fosters distinct focal concerns, such as trouble, toughness, (street) smartness, excitement, fate, and autonomy, that are conducive to criminal and delinquent behavior. In particular, Miller’s description of the focal concerns trouble, toughness, and excitement closely map the description of low self control markers like impulsivity, physicality, and lack of deferred gratification.
Moreover, descriptors like physicality both beg the question and ignore the work environment of criminal enterprise and lifestyle—where, more so than typifies conventional economic endeavors, physical characteristics such as strength and “muscle” (capacity for force or violence) have special usefulness. That crime activities and sustained criminal enterprise are often intrinsically physical (also risk-taking, etc.) is noted by Steffensmeier, as follows:
Strength, prowess, and muscle are useful for the successful commission of crimes, for protection, for enforcing contracts, and for recruiting and managing reliable associates. Physical strength and speed are obviously useful for committing crimes such as robbery, burglary, and many kinds of cartage theft. Less obviously, they are important in hustling and theft activities in which the potential of violence or need for quick getaway are omnipresent. Muscle has specific utility for the protection of property and enforcement of contracts. . . . The criminal has to rely on his own, or that of his or her organization’s ability to protect, retaliate, or inspire respect among criminal associates (and perhaps others as well, such as victims or law enforcement). (1983:1014)
In other words, physicality and risk-taking are instrumental to a lot of money oriented crime, and are often intrinsic part of the criminal working environment, lifestyle, or field. Criminological theorizing should avoid committing the imploding tautology of using attributes or characteristics that are intrinsic to the crime itself as markers for stable, enduring individual dispositions toward crime (e.g., low self control, neuropsychological deficits, or antisocial personality).
Relatedly, Hagan (1991) links risk-taking, the search for excitement and thrills, and conspicuous consumption of entertainment and “partying” to deeply rooted “subterranean values” of American society, particularly among masculine working-class and youth subcultures (see also Matza 1964). He also follows Veblen (1934) in observing that risk-taking and thrill-seeking are often seen as valued character traits. Thus, orientations said to be indicators of impulsivity and thus a lack of self-control appear to be quite correlated with working-class, masculine culture and lifestyles. We also note that crime as a pursuit or lifestyle almost by definition requires a sort of risk-taking stance, especially in responding to and building crime opportunities—in Sam’s words, “You either do it now or you don’t do it, otherwise the opportunity may be gone.”
Gottfredson and Hirschi might argue that similar causes (lack of self control) lie behind socioeconomic status attainment and criminality, and that at least one of the causes of low self control (inadequate parenting) is correlated with social class. Still, it may instead be that socialization into lower- or working-class cultural lifestyles and focal concerns fosters some of the above markers of low self control. If this causal sequence is correct, then differential association/social learning theory would seem to provide a better explanation of both low self control and class-linked criminality (for a related argument, see Jensen and Akers 2003).
Furthermore, risk-taking or being adventuresome or a “free spirit” and impulsivity are not the same things, and they carry very different social class and value connotations, depending on the status of the individual who exhibits them. These two concepts are often conflated, both by Hirschi and Gottfredson and others who advocate their general theory of crime. Instead, we see a need to conceptually and empirically distinguish between risk-taking and impulsivity. What are needed are conceptual and empirical ways of measuring impulsivity (i.e., present orientation, lack of planning) and dis-tinguishing it from “risk-taking capacity” or tastes for risks, which need not entail impulsivity and its components. As Greenberg and colleagues point out: “Gottfredson and Hirschi do not carefully distinguish inability to control oneself from simple failure to do so on the part of those who could control themselves if they wished” (Greenberg, Tamarelli, and Kelly 2002 :82, emphasis added).
Our culture admires and celebrates risk-taking among legitimate entrepreneurs, military leaders, adventurers, and others. We denigrate it among criminals, however. Among criminals, risk-taking becomes linked with impulsivity and a symptom of low self control.
We also argue that theoretical pictures of rationality and planning are sometimes unrealistic [something March and Simon (1958) also argued long ago]. Some depictions of crime point to a lack of long-range planning and deferred gratification among criminals and argue that most criminals are therefore impulsive, irrational, and lacking in self control. However, such models require as a litmus test of rationality a level of long-term planning and deferred gratification that typically does not characterize the lives of most people (especially those from the blue-collar working class—whose culture forms the underpinnings of, and are embellished in, underworld culture).
As Lemert notes, most of us live life on mostly a day-to-day basis. That is, most of us seldom plan anything much more than six months or so ahead (except perhaps in vague terms), often our plans are not even that far-sighted, and our plans are always subject to situational negotiation (Strauss 1993). As Lemert stated:
While some fortunate individuals by insightful endowment or by virtue of the stabilized nature of their situations can foresee more distant social consequences of their actions and behave accordingly, not so most people. Much human behavior is situa-tionally 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 modern social situations make it difficult to decide which means will insure ends sought. Often choice is a compromise between what is sought and what can be sought. (1972:79-80, emphasis added)
In sum, our position is that the Gottfredson and Hirschi conceptualization of low self control belongs in criminological theory as one potential cause of criminal behavior. However, we argue that (1) self control has been conceptualized in a narrow and perhaps class-biased manner and (2) that self control probably cannot be the basis for a “general theory of crime.” Self control may be important, but so are a variety of social controls, complex opportunity structures, learning processes, and motivational factors.
We also recommend a renewed focus in criminology on the role of foreground factors, or proximal, situational factors in offender decision making. Symbolic interactionists observe that the most proximal, direct cause of behavior is actors’ definitions of the situations in which they act (Maines 2001). Applying this conception to criminology suggests that more research should focus on processes of how criminals or would-be criminals define situations, develop motivations, and weigh situational alternatives as they consider and choose to engage in crimes, as well as how these processes are shaped by larger social contexts (see Lemert 1951; Lofland 1969; Athens 1997; McCarthy and Hagan 1992; Wright and Decker 1994). Such factors are typically relegated to secondary positions compared to background factors or individual traits (e.g., family structure, social bonds, poverty, self-control, impul-sivity, neuropsychological deficit) in contemporary criminological research. A situational focus, however, fosters a different type of imagery of crime and criminals.
On one hand, the notion of “situational crime” refers to crime committed by ordinarily law-abiding adult citizens with a relatively well-integrated set of roles and with little in the way of observable neuropsychological deficits or pathology. External stresses and strains may temporarily disrupt one’s moral code or fear of the law in ways leading to criminal behavior.
Relatedly, Lofland (1969) and Wright and Decker (1994) focus on “encapsulation,” where offenders’ lifestyles, associations, and socioeconomic characteristics combine to push them toward offending. An offender who comes across a promising crime opportunity, has a pressing need for cash, and has associates at hand with whom to engage in the crime is more likely to commit the crime. This situational encapsulation process is not irreversible or deterministic. Instead, it is a process involving chains of decisions made in the face of desires and constraints, a process that over time becomes a constraint itself (see Becker 1960; Lemert 1951).
This picture of situational crime and/or encapsulation probably accounts for a lot of offending, especially by younger and less-skilled offenders; and also may contribute to “first-time” offending or intermittent offending by older persons. This situational focus directs our attention to the offense and its situational context to a greater extent by isolating potential criminal and noncrimi-nal options and how participants define them. Thus, a situational focus is hard to square conceptually with the imagery of individual offender pathology.
A related image of crime and criminals is presented by the stubborn folk idea that persons leading lives persistently departing from society’s approved rules and regulations must he unhappy, demoralized, and emotionally maladjusted. The notion is almost foreign that crime can be “fun” (but see Katz 1988) and that one can be doing crime regularly while also being relatively self-contented, like Sam Goodman. We agree with Lemert (1951, 1972) that neither adjustment or maladjustment, nor feeling happy or unhappy, nor having low or high self-esteem are inevitable consequences of chronic criminal offending.
Most proponents of stable criminal trait or propensity theories make a great effort to counter the view that loyalty and trust are key elements of the underworld code and that criminals are capable of loyalty, interpersonal commitment, and trust. Criminals, they point out, have too many character defects to be loyal or trustworthy. Thus, they point out that criminals frequently “snitch” on one another as evidence of this lack of loyalty, trust, and interpersonal commitment among criminals. This implies that law-abiding people, in similar circumstances, would be more loyal or “solid” and thus less likely to snitch. But Sam Goodman often noted that he would trust “a decent thief to hold up and not snitch much more than I would your businessman, or your ordinary ‘joe blow citizen.’“
As we implied above about unrealistic conceptions of rationality and planning, the same logic applies to notions like deferred gratification. The fact that criminals often do not engage in long-range planning, live their lives in the present or near term, tend to spend money in an “easy come, easy go” fashion is taken as evidence of impulsiveness, lack of self control, and inability to defer gratification. Yet, our observation is that many conventional, law-abiding people, especially among the blue-collar working class, behave similarly, at least at times. For example, the news is full of stories of “ordinary folks” hitting the lottery or coming into “easy money,” and blowing the money in a shortsighted manner. Thus, an “easy come, easy go” attitude toward money and planning on the part of many criminals also reflects the lifestyle and norms of their network circles and reference groups.
In effect, scholars, journalists, and the conventional public sometimes create negative imagery of criminals by highlighting their shortcomings, and suggesting that they really are incapable of, and do not manifest, any valued traits. Perhaps Sam’s narratives exaggerate the “solidness,” or the degree of trust, loyalty, and commitment to associates in at least some parts of the underworld. However, we suspect that writers like Gottfredson and Hirschi or James Q. Wilson (see also Delisi 2003) exaggerate the lack of these behaviors among criminals, and overgeneralize the image of the impulsive, dissolute criminal.
Finally, focusing on self-control, neuropsychological deficit, or other stable individual criminal propensity notions overlooks or denies the nexus between the legitimate and the illegitimate that is a key theme of both The Fence and Confessions. Some criminologists and their theories want us to believe (and perhaps want to convince themselves) that illegal enterprise—and the underworld in a general sense—are separate and detached entities from the rest of society. Furthermore, criminals, thieves, swindlers, illicit businessmen, etc. are depicted as distinct “kinds of people” who are very different from law-abiding folk.
However, as Thorstein Veblen (1934), Edwin Sutherland (1947), Alfred Lindesmith (1941), Walter Miller (1958), David Matza (1964), and John Hagan (1991) have all observed, many subterranean values in the legitimate world overlap with the norms and codes of the illegitimate world. These scholars would argue that it is a mistake to regard the underworld, illegitimate entre-preneurship, or theft and fencing as activities separate or detached from the larger culture and social structure. To quote Alfred Lindesmith: Crime “is rather an integral part of our total culture. ... It is in this sense that we have the criminals we deserve” (1941:120).
These links and porous boundaries between the criminal and conventional worlds can be illustrated by many examples. First, members of the lower and working classes often sympathize with the cynicism (and disillusionment) of the underworld. Second, an individualistic, predatory philosophy of success is reflected in both the conventional business world and in the business of crime. Third, the underworld meets the demand for goods and services that are defined as illegitimate, but for which there is nevertheless a strong demand from respectable people (cheap goods and liquor, illicit drugs, sex, gambling, etc.). Fourth, the underworld offers an informal economy that supports many people for whom only marginal low-paying conventional jobs are available. Last, respectable folk like and admire illegal entrepreneurs like Sam.
To us, a more useful perspective and set of images of crime and criminals comes from combining Sutherland’s notion of normative (or moral message) conflict and differential social organization with Pierre Bourdieu’s (1977; 1985) concept of “fields” and “habitus,” and Anselm Strauss’s (1993) similar conception of social worlds. Bourdieu’s fields are arenas for rule-guided striving in which one competes or cooperates with others for rewards, upward status mobility, and well-being. Within fields, people acquire, employ, and exchange different kinds of economic, social, cultural, and symbolic capital in their goal-oriented striving. Furthermore, the rules guiding activities in a field are not unbreakable constraints. As Sam’s narratives often show, conformity or nonconformity with field rules are strategic choices with different advantages, and these advantages vary according to different situations and one’s position in the field.
Different social worlds or fields present different bodies of knowledge, definitions of situations, moral systems, and cognitive schemes—that is, in Bourdieu’s term, habitus. Habitus guides people’s activity in a field by organizing their perceptions, and habitus also depends on one’s position in the field. By implication, different fields also present participants with different goals, strategies for achievement, and identities. Furthermore, norms and values are not general aspects of culture, but are field-specific, and navigating between fields is a complex task.
Thus, an extension of Sutherland’s concept of normative conflict and differential social organization is to see the conventional world and underworld as distinctive but overlapping fields. Within these fields, people acquire the habitus of cognitive schemes, skills, and knowledge appropriate to given conventional or criminal fields, through differential association and other social learning processes. All individuals are located in a number of fields, each with its own morality, practices, and available identities. Some of these fields are primarily classified as conventional by the dominant cultural and political order, and some are classified as criminal. Thus, Sam Goodman is an employer and businessman, a family man, a donor to charity, and a criminal.
Thus, in terms of imagery, differential association/social learning theory, as well as viewing the underworld and conventional world as overlapping fields, removes some of the stigma from criminals. Criminals are no longer intrinsically evil people; they are products of the same generic sociological processes that characterize every person throughout life. This also presents a more optimistic view of human nature. If crime is learned in the context of differentially organized fields, then if the criminal socialization is not too entrenched and the individual is not too embedded in criminal networks and relationships, crime can be replaced with more useful learning in the context of more conventional fields.
At the same time, as we noted above, there also are countervailing cultural pressures and contradictory messages even within dominant cultures. Just as there are powerful pressures for conformity in society (which Sam clearly felt), there are also messages and opportunities that encourage the opposite. Subcultura! values and identities, and subterranean traditions and beliefs in the general culture condone or encourage “dishonesty.” For example, mainstream American culture values honesty and trustworthiness, but also makes folk heroes (real and fictitious) out of Jesse James, Al Capone, and Don Corleone. Indeed, many readers of The Fence found Sam Goodman to be a sort of admirable rogue. Furthermore, even most deviants are conforming in most aspects of their lives most of the time, and people are often deviant in some but not in most aspects of their life and activities.
That is how Sam Goodman was. He was a thief, fence, and racketeer. He punched and robbed an old man one Halloween, and he strangled a wounded co-offender to death to save his own skin. He was also friendly, hard working, generous, loyal to friends, and loved children. He hated drugs, sex offenders, crimes against children, and those who victimized the elderly. Sam shows that the reality of crime is not a television morality play, and that criminal nature, like human nature, does not come in one-dimensional packages.
1. As Talcott Parsons noted in his classic work, The Structure of Social Action, the calculation of the costs of crime varies by one’s morality. Among those for whom “a rule is a moral obligation, the attitude of calculation is lacking” (1937:403).
2. To expand on the notion of the timing of their use, the types of neutralizations and/or accounts could be used as motives (1) before contemplating an illegal act, releasing the actor to be morally free to choose the act, (2) while contemplating an illegal act, to seek self-conscious approval that it is acceptable to go ahead, or (3) after an illegal act, to seek to reduce blame and culpability.