Traditional subcultural theorists maintain that offenders operate in an environment in which oppositional norms catering to ethics of violence, toughness and respect dominate the social landscape. Such offenders actively reject middle-class value systems and operate beyond the boundaries of what is considered decent society. In their seminal work introducing Neutralization Theory, Sykes and Matza criticized such subcultural perspectives for overemphasizing the extent to which actors reject mainstream values (1957). They maintained that offenders and delinquents are aware of conventional values, understand that their offending is wrong, and self-talk before offending to mitigate the anticipated shame and guilt associated with violating societal norms. This study analyzes street offender decision making and behavior in an effort to expand that perspective. The analyzed data was taken from interviews of hardcore, active, noninstitutionalized (uncaught) drug dealers, street robbers and carjackers to determine how they neutralize to support their offending. Findings indicate that these offenders strive to protect a self-image consistent with a code of the streets orientation rather than a conventional one. That is, they neutralize being good rather than being bad. This suggests that expanding the scope of neutralization theory beyond the confines of conventional value systems will allow the theory to explain the behavior of a larger group of offenders. It also takes into account the kinds of real-world contextual forces that now influence urban crime.
We explore predatory offenders' subjective perceptions of time and investigate how these perceptions shape their decision-making. We do so by examining interviews with 109 active armed robbers and carjackers in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. These offenders view their lives as unfolding within fatalistic time tracks emerging from financial insecurity and unstable futures. Within these, they define the foreground of their offenses as temporal episodes. Doing so shapes and is shaped by the feelings of control they experience in the episodes. Outside of their offenses, they define the episodes of their lives by contrasting them to the dominant sociotemporal order. We discuss implications for decision-making, cyclical involvement in predatory crime, the rewards of such crime, and the function of present orientation
In The Process is the Punishment, Malcolm Feeley exposed the lower criminal court as a powerful institution in American life, an important counterpart to both the more glamorous federal courts and the more highly charged superior courts that preside over serious crimes within a jurisdiction. Although it typically handles only low-level criminal charges, the lower criminal court's reach is both broad and deep; in its functioning and process it has the capacity to change the lives of many who come before it – sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse – irrespective of guilt or innocence, conviction or dismissal.
This chapter discusses the "foreground of crime" – its proximate causes. It addresses the motivation, targeting, planning, and enactment of street crime. It argues that what is important about these offenses is the extent to which situational factors associated with the offender and situational factors associated with a crime opportunity combine to produce a particular offense at a particular time
This article explores the crucial role played by criminal expertise in carjacking, a violent street offense that exhibits characteristics of both car theft and robbery. Specifically, it describes the manner in which an offender's perceptual skills (aimed at discerning the suitability of a carjacking target) and procedural skills (aimed at enacting the carjacking offense itself) relate to one another in a process emanating from the interacting characteristics of the vehicle, driver, environment, and offender. The core assumption of this perspective is that carjacking requires considerable skill to identify an appropriate offense opportunity and carry out the same. This contradicts a prevailing notion within the criminological literature that offending is a largely unskilled enterprise. Drawing on ethnographic data both original and in previous research we demonstrate this not to be the case.
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Because of their illicit status, drug dealers robbed in the course of doing business cannot go to the police. Thus, the deterrent, compensatory and retributive benefits of formal justice are unavailable to them. Informal avenues of redress represent their only means of obtaining justice. This article, based on interviews with 20 recently robbed, active drug dealers in St Louis, Missouri, explores how such victims perceive and respond to the assault. Results indicate that direct retaliation is the preferred response because it serves three important aims: reputation maintenance, loss recovery and vengeance. When dealer/victims are unable or unwilling to retaliate they resort to less satisfactory alternatives such as robbery displacement and the resumption of selling. The implications of these findings for the spread of drug market violence are discussed.
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