into the individual's cost-benefit calculus, making him more or less ready to accept one or another type of criminal opportunity (or criminal opportunity in general), The influence of these factors may be such that situational ones will never induce him to commit a crime, Commonly, however, this is not the case; situational factors are often decisive even with persons who have little propensity toward crime.
One who would "never think of stealing" steals when the temptation
becomes great enough; that is, when the situation promises great enough benefits at small enough cost. Similarly, one who thinks nothing of murder may be checked by the presence of a policeman,
The elements of propensity seem to be mainly these:
Type of Morality, This refers to the way in which an individual conceptualizes right and wrong and, therefore, to the weight he gives to legal and moral rules in making choices, One whose morality is
preconventional" understands a "right" action to be one that will
serve his purpose and that can be gotten away with; a "wrong" action is one that will bring ill success or punishment. An individual whose morality is preconventional cannot be influenced by authority (as opposed to power), One whose morality is conventional" defines right" action as doing ones "duty" or doing what those in authority require; for him, laws and moral rules have a constraining effect even
in the absence of an enforcement apparatus, One whose morality is
postconventional" defines "right" action as that which is in accord
with some universal (or very general) principle that he considers
worthy of choice, Such an individual is constrained by law as such only if the principle that he has chosen requires him to be; if it requires him to obey the law only when he thinks that the law in question is just, he is, of course, not under the constraint of law at all.
Ego Strength, This refers to the individual's ability to control
himself especially to his ability to adhere to and act on his intentions (and therefore to manage his impulses) and to his ability to make efforts at self-reform, One who is radically deficient in ego strength cannot conceive or implement a plan of action; he has a
succession of fleeting resolves, the last of which eventuates in action under the pressure of circumstances.
SEVERAL KINDS OF CRIME 183
Time Horizon, This refers to the time perspective an individual
takes in estimating costs and benefits of alternative courses of action, The more present-oriented an individual, the less likely he is to take account of consequences that lie in the future. Since the benefits of
crime tend to be immediate and its costs (such as imprisonment or loss
of reputation) in the future, the present-oriented individual is ipso
facto more disposed toward crime than others,
Taste for Risk, Commission of most crimes involves a certain
amount of risk, An individual who places a very low (perhaps even a negative) value on the avoidance of risk is thereby biased in the direction of crime.
Willingness to Inflict Injury. Most crimes involve at least the possibility of injury to others and therefore a certain willingness on the part of the actor to inflict injury, It may be useful to distinguish
among (a) individuals with a distaste for inflicting any injury ("crimes
without victims" would still be open to them, of course); (b) those
with a distaste for injuring specifiable individuals (they might steal from a large enterprise, but they would not cheat the corner grocer);
(c) those with a distaste for doing bodily (but not necessarily other) injury to people; and (d) those with no distaste for inflicting injuries, along with those who positively enjoy inflicting them,
These several elements of propensity tend to exist in typical
combinations, In general, an individual whose morality is preconventional also has little ego strength, a short time horizon, a fondness for risk, and little distaste for doing bodily harm to speci- fiable individuals, The opposites of these traits also tend to be found together,
It also happens that individuals whose propensity toward crime is relatively high especially those with high propensity for violent crime tend to be those whose situation provides the. strongest incentive to crimes of the common sorts. The low-income individual
obviously has much more incentive to steal than does the high-income one, Similarly, a boy has much more incentive to "prove he is not chicken" than does a girl. In general, then, high propensity and high inducement go together.
With respect to both propensity and inducement, there are very important differences between: (I) males and females, (2) persons of different class cultures, and (3) the young and the not-
young.
Although their arrest rates for serious offenses have risen sharply in recent years (from 10 percent of all arrests in 1960 to 18 percent in 1972), females have much less propensity toward crime, especially violent crime, than males, (Among girls, running away from home is the most common offense, but females in general account for from 25
to 30 percent of arrests for forgery, fraud, and embezzlement.) In general, women seem to be more future-oriented than men, better able to control their impulses, more adverse to risk, and less disposed to inflict physical injuries, Be this as it may, in all class cultures their
inducement to most kinds of crime is clearly less than that of men, Far
from being under pressure to be "tough" and to prove that they have been around," they are, even in the lower class, expected to be frail \ and "domestic," (It is safe to say that the women s liberation move- ment has had no influence upon the working and lower classes.
) In
recent years large numbers of women have entered the labor force (however, relatively few in the lower-working and lower classes have done so), but women are still much less likely than men to be in the role of provider - a role that increases both motive and opportunity for the most common crime, stealing, Moreover, their relative lack of physical strength disqualifies them from heavy criminal work as does from other heavy work, and no doubt it has much to do with their distaste for risk and for inflicting bodily injury,
The difference in propensity and inducement is hardly less striking among classes than between sexes. For the lower-class individual
high propensity coincides with high inducement. As a child he may have been punished physically rather than psychologically, and there- fore it may seem natural to him that aggression take the form of a
physical attack.8 He has little ability to control impulses. His behavior is "decided upon" from moment to moment,
Now without havin' any intention of robbin' this guy I was crossin' the street. Actually I was crossin' the street to rob him, but it actually wasnt on my mind, If someone had1rsked me why I had crossed the street I couldn t a told him, I just doin' this unconscious,
184 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED
The morality of lower-class culture is preconventional, which
SEVERAL KINDS OF CRIME / 185
means that the individual' s actions are influenced not by conscience but only by a sense of what he can get away with,1o
The general attitude toward stealing is one in which the individual feels some type of "right" to 00 so, It is not perceived strictly in terms of
stealing" but instead of "taking,"ll
Apparently everyone has this conception of stealing at a stage of his childhood, Most persons grow out of it, pangs of conscience
making it hard for them to steal; the lower-class person, however, continues to " take" things all his life.
As the child grows older, there is a gradual change in the type of things stolen and their relative worth, There is a graduation from the candy bar to stealing from the rummage shop sale , to stealing from downtown depart- ment stores, to stealing, signing and cashing welfare checks,
Infliction of bodily injury is also sanctioned often
inculcated-
by lower-class culture,
The lower classes not uncommonly teach their children and adolescents to strike out with fist or knife and to be certain to hit first. Both girls and boys at adolescence may curse their father to his face or even attack him with fists, sticks, or axes in free-for-all family encounters, Husbands and wives sometimes stage pitched battles in the home; wives have their husbands arrested; and husbands try to break in or burn down their own homes when locked out, Such fights with fists or weapons, and the whipping of wives, occur sooner or later in most lower-class families, They may not appear today, nor tomorrow, but they will appear if the observt:r remains long enough,13
The rapist, according to Amir, tends to be a member of a lower- class subculture in which masculinity is expressed in general aggres- siveness, including sexual exploits. Boys brought upin this subculture
learn overt and direct aggressive attitudes and conduct from their families, as well as from peers,"14 Exploitive behavior toward women becomes part of their motivational systems: they do not conceive it
as wrong or as a deviation from the normal."
Because the lower-class style of life involves an unremitting search for sex and for relief from boredom, it tends to bring the individual into situations in which he is likely to violate a law, Moreover, he has little or nothing to lose no job, no money, no reputation
being charged with a crime, In the lower-class world it is taken for granted that everyone "gets in trouble" and may go to jail now and then. Being known as vicious and violent may give one a certain
prestige in the slum, as it does in a prison, Finally, since he is unwilling or unable to keep a job or to acquire a skill, the lower-class individual's opportunities for income are relatively poor, Even if the
wage rate" for "hustling" were low (in fact it is often very high) that might be the best "job" open to an unskilled youth, especially one who
prefers the "life of action" to regular work,15
Higher up on the class-cultural continuum in the upper-working and lower-middle classes the situation is very different as regards both propensity and inducement. As compared to the lower class members of these classes have little taste for violence or for risk; they are also much more able to take the future into account and to control their behavior. But what most distinguishes them from those " above as well as from those "below" them on the class-cultural continuum is
their respect for authority, They tend to accept unquestioningly
whatever the authority of law, custom, religious teaching, or even public opinion" declares, Of course, the individual sometimes does what h~ knows to be wrong, but when he does he feels guilty about it, The prickings of conscience weight his calculus heavily, if not always decisively, toward what he considers right and proper,
In these classes, too, inducement tends to reinforce propensity, Once he has married and settled down, such an individual can usually earn more at honest work than he could get by crime, In addition, his
job, family, and circle of friends and neighbors insulate him from many temptations, He knows also that if he "got in trouble " he would lose his job and bring disgrace upon himself and his family,
It might be expected that those "highest" on the continuum the upper-middle and upper classes would be least prone to crime, They have the greatest ability to take account of the future and to con- trol themselves. They tend to be more apverse to risk, and, whereas the lower class has learned in childhood to be violent, they have learned to be nonviolent
- "
to hammer on the Playskool Cobbler Bench but not on their b.wthers and sisters,"16
There is, however, another tendency within the upper- and
upper-middle-class culture that works in an opposite direction. The
186 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED SEVERAL KINDS OF CRIME / 187
individual has a strong sense of self, and he attaches great importance to " developing his potentialities to the full," Insofar as he thinks that
his future is sufficiently provided for (that he "has it made ), he tends to emphasize self-expression rather than self-improvement and, accordingly, present gratification rather than saving and investment;
his style of life may then resemble that of the present-oriented individual, except, of course, that whereas he chooses to live in the present, the lower-class one lives in it because he must, In order to develop or express his personality, the upper- or upper-middle-class person seeks out new and " rewarding
" "
experiences," He "owes it to
himself' to try dried grasshoppers with his martinis and the
equivalent with his sex, his politics, his child rearing, and all else, He feels obliged "as a responsible person" to decide for himself what is right and wrong; simply to accept the dictates of authority, including that of law, appears to him demeaning: one ought to assert oneself as an "individual" by deciding (on "rational" grounds, of course) what rules to follow, Having done so, one ought to have "the courage of one s convictions,
Such an individual is apt to try illegal as well as other "ex- periences," He is especially apt to do so if he thinks that the law
proscribing them is "stupid" or inappropriate to the circumstances of his particular case, If he breaks the law, he is unlikely to feel guilty;
on the contrary, he may take virtuous satisfaction in the thought that he has performed a public service by helping to bring a "stupid" law
into disrepute.
How upper- and upper-middle-class attitudes can lead by this
different route to behavior that is concretely indistinguishable from
that of the lower class may be seen in the matter of drug use, According to Dr, Norman E, Zinberg, there are two contrasting
motivations behind the use of drugs, One group of users, drawn mainly from the lower socioeconomic strata, are "like children" in that they "want nothing but the immediate satisfaction of pleasurable desires," The other group, drawn mainly from the middle and upper socioeconomic strata, consists of "experience seekers
: "
Drugs give them a sense of liberation from convention, a feeling that a level of genuine experience which is closed to them by their culture is opened for them by the drug,"17
As with drug use, so with many crimes: the "same" act has very different meaning for the experience-seeker and the pleasure-seeker,
If it is characteristic of the
upper- and upper-middle-class individual to express his personality and to seek experience, it is also characteristic of him not to want to hurt others - indeed, to want to do them good if possible. This attitude also influences the kinds of crime that he may commit. For murder, assault, and rape violencein general- he has no stomach, He may commit an act of violence in order to further a political principle; this, after all, is what doing the right" thing or the "just" thing may require. Euthanasia and suicide are the only kinds of killing that are really compatible with his style however the latter because it injures no one but the doer and the former because it is a way of doing good, Whereas rates of aggressive (i.e., nonaccidental) homicide decrease the higher one goes on the
class-cultural scale, those of suicide increase,
The same principle applies to other kinds of crime. Vice , for
example, may attract the upper- or upper-middle-class individual
both because it is "experience" and because (in his view) no one is injured by it. Under some circumstances he may steal with a clear almost clear, conscience. If he is a, teen-ager he may "borrow" an, or automobile (much some think most auto theft is by middle-
class youths), expecting that the owner will suffer nothing more than a certain amount of inconvenience on account of the theft. If he is a
grown-up, he may embezzle from an organization (the larger the better) knowing that no specifiable individual will be much injured by his action. If the organization is a very large one, he may steal in the knowledge that no one will be injured at all. Who suffers if he cheats a little on his income tax?
In every social class, children, adolescents, and youths, most of
them male, commit far more than their proportionate share of most
crimes. In 1972, 27 percent of all serious ("index ) crimes solved
involved persons under eighteen years of age, although the age group ten to seventeen accounted for only about 16 percent of the nation population.19 Of the arrests for violent crimes (murder, forcible rape aggravated assault, and robbery), 7 percent were of children under the age of fifteen, (These figures, it sHould be noted, include only arrests
for serious offenses. In 1972, 1 271 000 juveniles were "taken into
188 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED
SEVERAL KINDS OF CRIME / 189 custody" by the police, nearly half being released without having been arrested,
Change in the age composition of the population meaning for all practical purposes, increase in the proportion of young
men-
accounts for 13 percent of the difference in the number of serious crimes committed in 1970 as against 1960, an amount equal to that caused by mere increase in the number ofthe popuiation,
By far the most common offense of the young girls as well as boys is stealing. They steal things that they "need," such as cig- arettes, candy, bicycles, and presents for girl and boy friends and mothers.21 When they "need" something and do not have the money
to pay for it, they "take" it. Stealing is also a way in which boys prove" themselves by displaying qualities that they believe (not
altogether mistakenly) to be manly - boldness, stamina, willingness to accept risk in a word, " heart. " Unusual achievement along these lines earns a boy prestige among his fellows. "You stole eight cars!
Jeez!"
The younger the individual, the greater (other things being equal) his propensity toward crime, Children, of course, have very little ability to control their impulses or to take account of the future, Even teen-agers are typically improvident in the extreme,
Whatever money meant to them, the boys never kept it very long, When they had money, they stopped stealing and started spending, Very often they bought things they did not need, and sometimes things they did not want. They would perhaps plan in rather meticulous detail how much money they would save for what , but the money seldom lasted long enough to be spent even the next day,
If ego strength and awareness of the future develop slowly, so does moral understanding. A boy has passed the stage of preconventional morality (if he is ever going to pass it) long before reaching his teens;
the hold of conventional (or postconventional) morality on him is less than firm, however. Moreover, the disturbance, partly biological and partly sociopsychological, arising from the sudden eruption of sexual impulses and the compulsion to find an answer to the question: Who am I? frequently leads to confused and irrational behavior.
In the case of boys, especially, one is struck by a resemblance