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There are certain skills and attributes that enable fences (or thieves) to cope with the economic, legal, and moral problems associated with participating in illegal activities. The main requirements mentioned in the reading include larceny sense, connections to the underworld and beyond, and charisma. Larceny sense refers to the ability of individuals to perceive and capitalize on less legitimate activity that may be advantageous. It is part attitude, part knowledge, and the author states that it is something in the “heart” that allows individuals to be unobstructed by conventional, normative beliefs about the right thing to do. An important component of larceny sense is street smarts, knowing how to maneuver underworld society and how to …show more content…
Criminal attitude and learning of dealing skills begins long before people become full-fledged thieves. Most have shady pasts that has influenced their intuitions about criminality and hustling, and this background often informs them of the best ways to evaluate information and situation. In Sam’s case, his experiences in jail were where he learned the most. Being around people with a similar ingenuity is crucial for fostering criminality. Ingenuity refers to the ability to actively exploit one’s environment by creating and controlling opportunities. It’s a furthering of larceny sense and springs from the street smarts retained with interactions with the underworld. It takes initiative to manipulate persons and resources, and a certain combination of cleverness and …show more content…
Charisma is uncommon persuasive skills and powers to attract others to them that informs their personality, social skills, talking ability, and ability interact with a variety of people. This skill is key to hustling, and after the fact, it plays a core role in establishing and sustaining relationships. It contributes to the “must have a heart” qualification in the book, a set of traits that are a combination of courage, coolness, tenacity, self-assurance, and most importantly the ability to perform under pressure. This inspires confidence and respect in an individual’s ability, and demonstrates that they are reliable and can handle their business. A vital aspect of this, as with most underworld activities, is violence. It is an indispensable resource for inspiring respect among associates, and it enforces the promises that in general society would be upheld by laws and the
August Wilson’s Fences was centered on the life of Troy Maxson, an African American man full of bitterness towards the world because of the cards he was dealt in life amidst the 1950’s. In the play Troy was raised by an unloving and abusive father, when he wanted to become a Major League Baseball player he was rejected because of his race. Troy even served time in prison because he was impoverished and needed money so he robbed a bank and ended up killing a man. Troy’s life was anything but easy. In the play Troy and his son Cory were told to build a fence around their home by Rose. It is common knowledge that fences are used in one of two ways: to keep things outside or to keep things inside. In the same way that fences are used to keep things inside or outside Troy used the fence he was building to keep out death, his family, and his disappointments in life while Rose used the fence to keep those she cared about inside and help them bond.
Pickpockets used their brain instead of their physical attributes in order to commit their crime, and tried to avoid violence at all cause, while gangs were more likely to use violence in order to accomplish their goals (Gilfoyle, T., Chapter13 pg. 13). For a pickpockets, honor, statues, and success did not come from violent act, but from deceiving others (Gilfoyle, T., Chapter13 pg.13). Gangs used violence as a way to climb the ladder of what they saw as success, and the more violent a person was the more respect they would receive from others ((Gilfoyle, T., Chapter13 pg.12 & 13). Overall the difference between gangs, pickpockets and confidence men was the way that they committed their criminal acts, and what they saw as brining honor, statues, respect, and success to them. Gangs saw violence as the way to gain respect, honor, and statues, while pickpockets and confidence men saw these same things coming from using your brain, and not your physical attribute to accomplish your
In addition to this overview Sutherland outlines nine specific factors which may enhance one’s ability to learn the criminal behaviors but for the purposes of this paper, three of the nine will be analyzed closely;
Differential association theory best explains the burglary deviance. There are many principles associated with this type of learning theory. Edwin Sutherland’s theory discusses how crime is a learned behavior where one’s family, peers, and environment are of great influence. Differential association theory seeks to prove that criminal behavior is learned and this paper will evaluate the connection between the two.
Winfree, T., & Abadinsky, H. (2nd Ed.). (2003). Understanding Crime: Theory and Practice. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth publishers.
Last but not least, another component discuss is that, people learn either criminal or noncriminal behavior through interaction with other people. Criminal behavior is learned just like every other behavior. It is observe and interpreted through a process of communication. The Jack Roller: A delinquent boy...
It is so basic to hear that the white-collar criminal are known as the most delightful gentleman or genuine family man by their neighbours in light of the fact that they doesn’t hurt anyone. They are admitted to this wrongdoing for their family need and fund.
The Cocaine Kids: The Inside Story of a Teenage Drug Ring is an intriguing narrative of the experiences Terry Williams witnessed first hand while observing the lives of “The Kids” and their involvement in the cocaine trade. Throughout this piece, there are numerous behaviors displayed by the drug dealers that are each examples of and can be attributed to well-defined criminological theories. This paper will explore how such criminological theories are associated with how and why individuals are introduced into the world of drug selling, as well as, why they leave it. I will elaborate on this by revealing the motivations and conditions that seem to pressurize these individuals to be drug dealers. Although there are multiples shown, the specific theories I will explore are all based on the same idea that an individual becomes a criminal by learning how to be one through experiences, examples, role models, etc. Such theories include the theory of Differential Association, Subculture of Violence Theory, and the Social Learning Theory.
Mr. John Clay not only has an aristocratic background as a foundation to be a criminal, but he also has the experience to lean on and improve his skills to be the brilliant criminal he is. “He’ll crack a crib in Scotland one week, and be raising money to build an orphanage in Cornwall the next. I’ve been on his track for years, and have never set eyes on him yet” (49) says Mr. Jones. One can think that since John Clay can seem to do good and bad in a short period time, he is a master at disguise. Behind the scenes nobody can see the crimes he commits but they do see the good deeds outwardly. Other people can see the kind gestures like raising money for an orphanage and then never expect him to be the type to commit crimes. Ultimately he has created this illusion of living a good life to have no one suspect that he would do anything other than kind acts. Through experience he has improved on his skills on how to almost be a perfect criminal. Committing crimes has made him improve on his skills and gain knowledge each time on how to commit a crime better than the last
Criminal and deviant behavior is not always inherently part of an individuals nature, it is learned. It’s not inherited or a result of a biological condition. Rather, criminal and deviant behavior is learned in the same way all other behaviors are learned. According to Edwin H. Sutherland in his differential association theory, learning comes from interactions between individuals and groups. Individuals commit criminal or deviant acts due to repeated contacts and interactions with criminal activity and the possible lack of contact with noncriminal activity. This explains crime at the level of individual and society. Alex Gibney’s documentary Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer takes an in depth look at the once known New York Attorney General and Governor who prosecuted crimes by America’s largest financial institutions as well as some of the most powerful executives. However, it was later revealed he had been involved in a sex scandal. He was accused of seeing prostitutes and the known “Sheriff of Wall Street” fell quickly. The documentary explores the hidden profile of learning pride, arrogance, sex, and especially power. Spitzer’s acts of wrongdoing and dishonesty run counter to his career commitment to fighting corruption, however, the actions of Spitzer and the prostitutes parallel what they surround themselves with and learn in the context of their training.
In 1953, Donald Cressey conducted an experiment on convicted embezzlers (Friedrichs, 2010). Through this study, Cressey assigned particular importance to the rationalization of the offenders. Cressey proposed that there were three necessary conditions for embezzlement to occur; “A non-sharable financial problem must exist, individuals and groups must have knowledge necessary to commit the embezzlement, and suitable rationalizations for such behaviors must be available to the actors” (Leclair, 2015). However, Cressey stated the last condition was the most important (Schlegel & Weisburd, 1992; Friedrich, 2010; Leclair, 2015). Rationalization is the way that individuals negate standards that condemn criminal behavior
The world will always be full of crime, thus it is necessary for scientist to grow along with the gruesome and increasing amount of violations. Due to this it sparked scientist to develop crime theories in which emerged to explain why crime is caused by individuals. Some of the few theories that have advanced over the past century and provided many answers to why crimes are committed are biological theories, psychological theories and learning theories. These theories provide an insight to its first use and change in order to provide answers.
In the United States, states and people follow the laws because the government has a way to enforce cooperation, by threatening punishment on those who break the law. The enforcement of laws is how most institutions promote cooperation. At the international level, however, there is no central authority that has the ability to make and enforce laws, in other words it is an anarchy. For example, countries like Russia or the UK do not have to do what the United Nations tells them to, since they cannot enforce anything. Because of the lack of enforcement, cooperation has to be self-enforcing, meaning the states have to punish the defectors and take responsibility when they don’t cooperate.
For a professional thief to be successful there are many personal traits, skills, and resources they must possess. In this paper, I will be using Darrell J. Steffensmeier’s The Fence: In the Shadow of Two Worlds which follows the life of Sam, a professional thief and fence, as a lens to analyze the skills, traits, and factors that surround being successful as a thief. I will then use this analysis to determine wether or not I personally could follow in Sam’s footsteps and be successful as a professional thief in the criminal underworld.
Sociologists have been examining crime and its causes for over 150 years, and through several researches, various explanations have been used to describe crime and deviance. Crime is a behaviour that goes against all formal written laws of a given society (Haralambos, Smith, O 'Gorman, & Heald, 1996). Laws in different societies differ, so do crimes i.e. what may be considered as a crime in one society may not be in another different society. For instance, while same-sex relationship is accepted in some countries like the United States, United Kingdom etc. it is illegal in countries like Nigeria, and most Arabic countries. Other examples of general crimes are theft/robbery, murder, kidnapping and others. Once a crime is committed, sanctions