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
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;
... criminals, which in real life is almost impossible to happen). Sutherland stressed the criminal behavior is learned and learned through communication. The slum where Sonny and his friends lived in provided the perfect area to cultivate criminal behavior. The slum was crowded; everyone knew everyone and they have enough time to interact with one another in an intimate setting.
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
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...
... up information about crime and it is truly sad to think about. Undeniably, crime is all around us, everywhere we go. There is always someone out there committing crime. “Deviance” is not inherent in people, it is a process in which you learn. Yet through many series of socialization, such as parents, friends, class, gender, an individual or group can become “deviant”. The interactionist theories the best sociological explanation due to the fact that it can alter people values and perception in many ways. For instance, supervision of the so called “street” parents, have a huge effect on their children’s development. However, being labeled as a criminal by the society has made people living in the so called “streets” to accept this label as a criminal and obey and commit crime. This semester has enabled me to better understand on how crime is formed and how it works.
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.
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
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.
...ommit crimes every day just for the sake of committing a crime; in other words, they have periods of no criminal behavior. So, their rational choice is to turn to burglary only when they are desperate for money. In essence, they have chosen burglary as their line of work.
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.
Rapper Jay Z once proclaimed, “I'm a hustler baby. I just want you to know... it ain't where I been, but where I'm about to go.” Although he wasn't referring to criminals in the hit song, his words strike a chord in regards to the “Hustlers” discussed in, “Burglars on the Job.” There are a plethora of internal and external factors that motivate a person to commit crimes such as burglary, but through background factors alone we cannot say for certain why a crime was committed by a select person. It is vital to study and begin to understand why people commit crimes as well as how they view their behavior. History and statistics have shown that simply adjusting our justice system to neutralize these offenders has had little to no impact on crime in our nation. Professors Richard T. Wright and Scott Decker risked their lives to further an academic study that sheds light on the perspective of burglars and how they interpret what they do. Many theorists believe that criminals are utilitarian and carefully weigh the potential costs and rewards of their illegal actions (p4). These two gentlemen, however, postulated that there are multiple facets of criminals to discover and consider through intimate contact in the field. While Chambliss and Polsky were hesitant to work “In the wild,” Wright and Decker felt that this was the best way to collect accurate data. They preferred to observe burglars in their natural habitat rather than speak with already incarcerated offenders in criminal justice system surroundings. One of only a small handful of studies involving active burglars, the book describes the motivation, considerations, and choices that burglars make throughout each stage of crime. Follo...
Different schools of thought propose varying theoretical models of criminality. It is agreeable that criminal behaviour is deep rooted in societies and screams for attention. Biological, Social ecological and psychological model theories are key to helping researchers gain deeper comprehension of criminal behaviour and ways to avert them before they become a menace to society. All these theories put forward a multitude of factors on the outlooks on crime. All these theories have valid relevancy to continuous research on criminal behaviour.