© The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com

NEUTRALIZATION WITHOUT DRIFT: CRIMINAL COMMITMENT AMONG PERSISTENT OFFENDERS

Bruce A. Jacobs and Heith Copes*

Prior research suggests that serious predatory offenders are sufficiently committed to illicit conduct that they must neutralize good behaviour, rather than bad behaviour. Drawing from a sample of offenders who commit carjacking, we question that assumption. Specifically, our data reveal the manner in which such offenders neutralize bad conduct without meaningfully drifting. The notion of ‘neutralization without drift’ represents a theoretical refinement of neutralization theory and an extension of core conceptualization in the interpretation of criminal commitment. Through this concept, we attempt to make sense of how persistent predatory offenders who commit carjacking are able to embrace aggression, explain that it’s not ‘really them’, neutralize bad rather than good conduct, yet retain their status as committed criminals.

Key words: neutralization theory, criminal commitment, drift

This is a paper about how carjackers experience what they do. We apply an interpretive perspective, under the larger umbrella of neutralization theory, to shed light on crimi-nal commitment and the contradictory ways in which people perceive participation in carjacking. We argue that these carjackers neutralize but do not drift. Neutralization without drift is a feature of persistent offenders who account for their actions, but who never meaningfully oscillate between conventional and illicit worlds. That is, they know what they are doing is pernicious, do it despite that awareness, explain it away with often circular logic and remain entirely open to repetition.

Criminal Commitment

Few concepts are more central to criminology than criminal commitment. Fewer still are as enigmatic. Indeed, defining precisely what it means largely has escaped theo-rists. Criminal commitment—which essentially refers to lawbreakers’ ‘buy-in’ to offend-ing—either is assumed or captured by proxy terms such as criminality and propensity. Commitment also tends to be presupposed by the act of offending itself: Offenders are committed because they engage in crime, and because they engage in crime, they must be committed.

Although the aetiology of criminal commitment dominates the discipline of crimi-nology, far less attention has centred on how offenders perceive it. Indeed, its interpre-tation by offenders may be one of the least studied concepts in the field. Qualitative criminologists have long argued that a full understanding of rule-breaking is best achieved by exploring how crime is experienced by the offender. Yet, even qualitative

*Bruce A. Jacobs, School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, 800 W. Campbell Rd., Richardson, TX 75080; Heith Copes, Department of Justice Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1201 University Boulevard, Suite 210, Birmingham, AL 35294; jhcopes@uab.edu

doi:10.1093/bjc/azu100 BRIT. J. CRIMINOL. (2015) 55, 286–302Advance Access publication 12 December 2014

286

at University of A

labama at B

irmingham

on June 23, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/

Dow

nloaded from

research is dominated by attention to the structure, process and contingent forms of crime rather than offenders’ interpretation of it. Actions are one thing, but the reasons behind them are another (Mills 1940), especially among predatory street offenders who talk about their conduct in seemingly contradictory ways (Sandberg 2009a, 2009b).

The question of criminal commitment and its perception by offenders is further com-plicated by whether commitment refers to a lifestyle, a value system or a discrete act. Commitment to values or acts is by no means necessary for commitment to a lifestyle, but the obverse also is true: Offenders frequently enact crimes out of habit or impulse and little else. Commitment, in other words, may only be as deep as the trigger of the moment. The tautological relationship between commitment and criminality is a sepa-rate but equally significant issue: Uncommitted offenders can offend, but committed offenders are not necessarily driven to crime. Despite the fact that commitment is not always inferable from conduct, many analysts continue to presume that it is.

Then there is the uneasy relationship between criminal commitment and morality. Are committed offenders lacking dedication to conventional lifestyles, pursuits and moralities, or does criminal commitment accompany an alternative worldview and identity? Morality and crime are thought to be mutually exclusive, but crime frequently is enacted for moralistic reasons—to respond to a grievance, to pay back a perceived affront, to teach a lesson or to make some broader statement (Black 1983; Jacobs and Wright 2006; Jacques 2010). Even offenders who may have put little thought into why they acted often conjure up motivations after-the-fact to make themselves feel better or to make others perceive them less negatively (Scott and Lyman 1968). These reasons justify not only the type of crime they select but also the victim they target and the specific ways in which they enact their crimes. Morality is both subjective and relational and frequently, offenders position themselves and their conduct in moralistic ways, even if these beliefs counter conventional thought (Cooney 2012).

No criminological perspective has underscored this point more emphatically than neutralization theory. Developed more than 50 years ago out of the need for a more nuanced treatment of criminal commitment than subcultural theorists could offer (Sykes and Matza 1957), neutralization scholars opined that offenders were not entirely wedded to crime. Instead, offenders vacillated between criminal and non-criminal worlds. The use of linguistic devices (i.e., neutralization techniques) permitted such drift to occur (Matza 1964). Over the years, neutralization theory has been the subject of dozens, if not hundreds, of studies (Fritsche 2005). Qualitative research examining neutralization theory shows overwhelmingly that offenders of all types seek to align their actions with personal and social expectations (Maruna and Copes 2005). Offenders do this by justifying or excusing their actions with culturally existing accounts in a way that assuages guilt and manages stigma (Sykes and Matza 1957; Scott and Lyman 1968).

Although neutralization theory was initially developed to explain delinquency (through soft determinism), it has been adapted and re-fashioned by narrative crimi-nologists to explain the process by which all offenders make sense of their lives and their selves (Maruna and Copes 2005). When confronted with their own deviant con-duct, actors seek to align that conduct with normative expectancies. Doing so allows them to maintain a desired identity (see Orbuch 1997 for a review of this literature). Viewed in this manner, linguistic devices such as neutralizations and accounts can be seen as outward manifestations of a person’s self- and social identity (McAdams 1993). Thus, when offenders are confronted with wrongdoings, the way they explain their

CRIMINAL COMMITMENT AMONG PERSISTENT OFFENDERS

287

at University of A

labama at B

irmingham

on June 23, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/

Dow

nloaded from

actions (i.e., neutralize or account for their crimes) becomes a way of maintaining a particular sense of self. They can commit violence but not be violent (Presser 2008); they can use methamphetamines but not be dysfunctional addicts (Copes et al. 2014); they can embezzle but not be thieves (Cressey 1953). The ability to tell the story of their actions allows many offenders to continue with their criminal pursuits.

The bulk of research on neutralizations has focused on actors who violate conven-tional norms, but recent research suggests that virtually everyone who violates nor-mative beliefs systems uses these devices either to maintain desired identities or to continue a line of action (Garot 2010). The value of neutralizations for violating subcul-tural value systems has been articulated in an innovative paper by Topalli (2005). Using interviews with persistent street offenders, he demonstrates how these individuals are so uncommitted to conventional society that they seldom express guilt or account for their crimes. They do, however, justify and excuse conduct that violates street codes. Thus, when showing mercy after being disrespected, they claimed that they did so because they were moved by the appeals of others to forgive the transgression or because they reinterpreted the original insult to be minor and unworthy of a response (Topalli 2005 2006; see also Garot 2010; Copes et al. 2013a). Topalli argues that when being good is bad, being good must be explained.

Neutralization theory—and the broader sociology of accounts—has brought the ambivalence of criminal commitment into focus. Prior research suggests one of two things as it relates to commitment and offenders’ perception of it. Consistent with tra-ditional neutralization theory, offenders presume: ‘I’m not bad, in fact, I’m good and here’s why I did what I did’. Second, and consistent with Topalli’s persistent criminals, offenders claim, ‘I’m bad and I’m not going to excuse or apologize for what I did, and, if I do apologize, it’s because I was good and should have been bad’. Both beliefs are conducive to criminal persistence because such stories allow offenders to more easily construct identities and make sense of their actions. Offenders who believe in the first ethos are the subject of most neutralization research (see Maruna and Copes 2005). Offenders who are serious and committed but who attempt to neutralize that conduct in more conventional ways typically are not the subject of research.

Such offenders represent persistent, predatory criminals who should not feel the need to offer accounts, yet still do. Using a sample of predatory carjackers, we argue that such offenders can do really bad things and explain them away without ever meaningfully straying from the clutches of committed criminality. We refer to this as neutralization without drift. Neutralization without drift requires that accounts offer an illusion of conventional morality, but it is an illusion because the explanations are excuses without a moral substructure. These excuses explain why the offender did what s/he did but fail to reconcile with any objective buy-in to conventional morality. Matza’s (1964) trea-tise explained that drift requires movement between conventional and criminal value systems and is made possible by excuses or justifications that reveal such a buy-in to conventional moral ideals. Indeed, all five founding neutralization techniques reflect offenders’ self-positioning as moral people: ‘No one really got hurt; the victim deserved what s/he got; people are shifting the blame onto me unfairly; I did it for a larger good; it’s really not my fault because of extenuating circumstances’ (Sykes and Matza 1957).

Offenders who construct a morality that either is relative—‘I was bad, but I could have been much worse’—or circular—‘I was bad because I was doing other bad things’—does not reflect morality in the Sykes/Matzian sense, nor does it betray drift between

JACOBS AND COPES

288

at University of A

labama at B

irmingham

on June 23, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/

Dow

nloaded from

conventional and unconventional worlds. These are persistent offenders who do really bad things and give explanations for it, but whose explanations never meaningfully dislodge them from deviant norms. They drift from bad to good, but still remain firmly anchored to bad. This contrasts typical neutralizations where individuals are anchored to good but drift to bad.

Whether such accounts reflect fundamental conflict between real-time criminal commitment and retrospective talk about it is unclear. If so, serious offenders may be committed to an act but not a status (i.e., they do not have a self-identity as bad), contra-dicting most of what we know and presume about persistent criminality. If that is true, the prospective value of such accounts should be irrelevant: Offenders do not perceive the need to neutralize before an offense, but then neutralize afterward in ways that require no meaningful drift. In other words, serious offenders do not believe they need to neutralize, then they do, but the neutralizations themselves never really require the offenders to oscillate between illicit and licit worlds. They are bad, but not ‘that bad’. We believe that by examining this commitment paradox, we can make sense of how persistent predatory offenders are able to embrace aggression, explain that it is not really them, neutralize bad as well as good conduct and yet retain their status as dedi-cated offenders. A sample of predatory carjackers provides data with which to explore this assertion. We offer a brief literature review on carjacking to situate our empirical research gap.

Carjacking

Carjacking has long been a problem in North America and particularly in the United States. The offense first grabbed American headlines in 1992 after the robbery-hom-icide of a woman in suburban Maryland (Topalli and Wright 2004). Two men com-mandeered her luxury vehicle as she dropped off her young child at school. When the offenders drove away, the victim remained stuck in the seatbelt, and she was brutally dragged to her death. Following a public outcry, the offense became the subject of federal legislation (Topalli and Wright 2004). The seriousness and attention-grabbing nature of this crime is by no means limited to the United States. Other countries have grappled with it as well as related crimes (for the South Africa experience, see Davis 2003; on Brazil bus robberies, see Paes-Machado and Levenstein 2004; in Australia, see Young and Borzycki 2008).

Carjacking involves the seizure of a motor vehicle using force or threat of force. Statistical data reveal that carjackings typically involve more than one offender, as well as offenders and victims who are strangers to one another. The modal carjacking takes place in a parking lot or on the street and is committed by an armed offender. Despite the presence of weapons, victim resistance is frequent, although carjackings rarely involve death or serious injury (see, e.g., Fisher 1995; Klaus 2004).

Like other forms of robbery, carjacking tends to be triggered by acute financial need, although other motives can play a role (see Jacobs et  al. 2003; Young and Borzycki 2008; Miethe and Sousa 2010). In the typical carjacking, the assailant forcibly extracts a driver from his or her running vehicle and drives it away, but other modalities exist and occur with reasonable regularity (Miethe and Sousa 2010). For instance, some car-jackers lurk near parked cars and wait for victims as they approach or exit their vehicles (Young and Borzycki 2008).

CRIMINAL COMMITMENT AMONG PERSISTENT OFFENDERS

289

at University of A

labama at B

irmingham

on June 23, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/

Dow

nloaded from

Undoubtedly, advances in anti-theft technology have enhanced the appeal of car-jacking (Miethe and Sousa 2010). Compared with breaking into a car that may be out-fitted with tamper-resistant countermeasures and trying to get it started, carjacking is simple: Threaten the victim, take control of the vehicle and drive it away. The simplic-ity of carjacking facilitates impulsive crimes and, like other forms of robbery (Feeney 1986; Jacobs 2000), carjacking is often a spur-of-the-moment affair.

Although social scientists have studied robbery as it occurs in a variety of settings and circumstances (Lejeune and Alex 1973; Feeney 1986; Shover 1996; Wright and Decker 1997; Jacobs 2000), carjacking has received comparatively less attention. This is especially true of the interpretive aspects of the crime (but see Topalli and Wright 2004; Copes et al. 2012; Jacobs 2013) and more specifically, the connection between what offenders do and how they talk about what they do. We believe that carjacking is an ideal crime for examining such concerns. Prior qualitative research on carjack-ing confirms that the offense tends to be committed by offenders in either particu-larly motivated or especially desperate states and who possess rather extensive criminal backgrounds (see, e.g., Jacobs et al. 2003). The backgrounds of our respondents are consistent with this picture.

Methods

We base our findings on the accounts of carjackers that the second author (H.C.) gath-ered in semi-structured, ethnographic interviews in two separate medium security Louisiana (US) prisons.1 Respondents were offenders who engaged in diverse forms of predatory crime, persistently over time, despite multiple and repeated contacts with the criminal justice system. These offenders were career criminals who ‘operated with little or no regard for the law’ (Topalli 2005: 806). Although we identify them as carjackers, they were not specialists and they did not identify as such. They engaged in a variety of serious rule-breaking behaviours, ranging from robbery and assault to drug dealing and common-law property crime. They all used illegal drugs, and the majority admit-ted to having addictions either to heroin or cocaine. They were heavily engaged in and surrounded by the drug economy and streetlife in poor neighbourhoods. Generally speaking, they were ‘obsessed on the one hand with a constant need for cash, drugs, and alcohol to “keep the party going” and limited by self-defeating and reckless spend-ing habits on the other’, both of which promoted predatory crime (Topalli 2005: 807). In addition, they self-identified as ‘hustlers’ who lived by the oppositional culture and who excelled at making a living by various hustles including theft, drug dealing and fraud. Finally, in Anderson’s (1999) words, they were street—placing a high value on deterring disrespect through violence, regardless of the long-term costs.

Their persistence in crime and drug use led to frequent contacts with agents of the criminal justice system. All had been arrested numerous times (most could not accu-rately recount the number of times they had been arrested). All respondents had at least one adult conviction, but the majority of respondents had multiple convictions for serious felonies. Crimes in their adult records ranged in severity from low-level drug distribution to robbery to attempted murder. Despite early and continued contact with the criminal justice system, they all returned to further crime commission. In short,

1 This research was conducted with the approval of the second author’s (H.C.) University Institutional Review Board.

JACOBS AND COPES

290

at University of A

labama at B

irmingham

on June 23, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/

Dow

nloaded from

‘they are [people] who failed to learn their lesson’ despite severe penalties and modest returns from their crimes (Shover 1996: xiii).

With the help of prison clerks and staff, the second author (H.C.) used purposive sampling to locate offenders who committed carjacking. Although Louisiana has a stat-ute that regulates carjacking, he was unable to find a sizable number of individuals who were sentenced under this statute. To expand the sample, he asked correctional officers if they knew inmates who had used force or the threat of force to steal vehicles. Using this strategy, he located and interviewed 30 such individuals. Respondents ranged in age from 21 to 40 (mean age = 25). Six participants were White and 24 were Black. All but two were male.

Researchers who interview inmates should take precautions to ensure that partici-pants are neither coerced into participating (due to excessive prodding from staff or from mistakenly believing that they will gain legal benefits for doing so) nor exposed to any undue harm. However, recent research on inmate-based research indicates that those under state supervision understand they are not obligated to participate. More importantly, they are aware that their decisions about participation will have no effect on their criminal justice status, including parole decisions (Copes et al. 2013b). Nevertheless, to address the possibility of coercion and harm, participants were ensured that their names would be kept confidential to the best of the interviewer’s abilities and informed that researchers could not help their position in the prison or their case for release in any way.

Participants were interviewed in private rooms where correctional officers were not present. Only the study participants and a lone interviewer were in the room during the interview. Although correctional officers were nearby, they were unable to listen in on the conversations. The interviews, which were audio-recorded, ranged in length from 30 to 90 minutes. The interviews were transcribed by trained personnel to mirror the spoken words as closely as possible; however, we did edit quotes to aid readability. We manually coded the interviews. That is, we developed coding schemes by reading hardcopies of the transcribed interviews and making notes about dominant themes on them rather than relying on qualitative software packages.

The initial goals of the interviews were to determine how participation in street cul-ture constrained their decision-making process and to elaborate on situational aspects of decision-making, including involvement and event decisions. During the interviews, participants were asked to elaborate on their motivations to commit carjacking, the target selection process, perceived risks and rewards of participating in carjacking, risk and fear management, and the techniques and skills used to accomplish their tasks. More importantly for this study, the research was interested in interpretive issues such as perceptions of self and how offenders defined themselves and their crimes. For example, respondents were asked if they thought they were violent people and whether others saw them as such. Here, possible inconsistencies (at least from our perspective) were probed about their violent acts and their conceptions of self as violent people, a central topic of inquiry here.

When interviewing people about their lives and beliefs, we must decide on how such data are to be viewed. Are the stories told by participants factual recounting of events or are they social constructions where participants are doing identity work (see Presser 2004)? We see the importance of narratives not so much in the substantive events these stories depict (i.e., what happened during their crimes), but in the meanings storytellers

CRIMINAL COMMITMENT AMONG PERSISTENT OFFENDERS

291

at University of A

labama at B

irmingham

on June 23, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/

Dow

nloaded from

attach to them. People’s identities are embedded in the stories they tell, and these sto-ries are shaped and constrained by the setting in question. This includes the larger social location where the events took place and the more local research setting. Thus, reflexivity is important.

Although much of the social sciences stress the importance of neutral researchers, current thought among narrative theorists suggests that this goal is not possible. Simply by conducting interviews in artificial settings, we shape the stories people tell and that, in turn, shapes the data. In this study, the location of the interviews (prison), the status of participants (inmates) and the status of the interviewer (professor) set the param-eters of the research and encouraged informants to respond within those parameters (Presser 2004). What is more, the nature of the project (to study participation in car-jacking) defined participants as violent offenders—they had to have forcibly stolen a vehicle to participate. Participants then either accepted this definition or resisted it, which the open-ended nature of the questions allowed them to do. Despite these con-straints, participants had a great deal of flexibility in how they recounted their crimes and their roles in them. Still, the very subject of the interviews defines to a large degree what they talk about and how they position themselves in the account.

Our findings may create the impression that violence was the dominant feature of participants’ lives and that they are one-dimensional characters. It is true that much of the interview consisted of participants talking about violence in some form. But this is because we focused the interview on this aspect of their lives and asked them to explain discrepancies between claims of non-violent selves and described violent acts.2 No doubt, the setting of the events described also affected the way they told their stories (Holstein and Gubrium 2000). The participants were largely from south Louisiana, primarily New Orleans. Most had lived in poor urban areas, and all had committed forcible auto theft. Accordingly, street culture and impoverished, crime-ridden neighbourhoods played a large role in the narratives they conveyed. Although the participants did not specialize in carjacking, they were self-defined hustlers, and carjacking was one of many ways they earned cash and reputations. Respondents’ larger identification was with street culture. That is, they placed a high value on fast living, conspicuous consumption, retaliation and respect. This value system is not unique to those we interviewed or to people liv-ing in the same areas. Indeed, such values have been found among people living in Philadelphia, United States (Anderson 1999), Oslo, Norway (Sandberg and Pedersen 2011) and Cardiff, Wales (Brookman et al. 2011). These attitudes are common among persistent male and female offenders in both North America and Europe (Brunson and Stewart 2006; Brookman et al. 2007). Although the prevalence of carjacking varies

2 If given the chance, they likely would have talked about other aspects of their lives. For example, in another setting, they may have only briefly discussed violence and chosen instead to talk about their religious beliefs, their love of family, the pains and lesson of imprisonment, or some other topic the researchers encouraged in conversational exchange. Like all others, our respondents had complicated lives and identities. Still, the participants took care to resist designations of violent selves. Our findings suggest that overwhelmingly they sought to resist the violent label (Hochstetler et al. 2010). Like those violent men interviewed by Presser (2004 2005 2008), those we interviewed actively resisted being defined exclusively as violent. They admit-ted to engaging in violent acts, but relied on a variety of linguistic techniques to sidestep the label. They presented themselves as complex characters—as being both decent and street (Sandberg 2009a 2009b). The context of interactions influences the style (and content) of stories in all situations, both in research settings and beyond (Gubrium and Holstein 1997). This is ines-capable. The influences of settings and other stimuli in the interview exist regardless of who the interviewer is or where the interview takes place. This necessitates the need for reflexivity in writing as there is no ‘true story’ waiting to be told (Presser 2004). Interviewers and authors must reflect and be aware of the potential influences structuring the directions that interviews take and subsequently the content of participant accounts.

JACOBS AND COPES

292

at University of A

labama at B

irmingham

on June 23, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/

Dow

nloaded from

globally, there is much less variation regarding the focal concerns of street life. It is because of this that we believe our findings are applicable outside of the United States. Although it is possible that the specific style and content of neutralizing is unique to this group, we argue that the process of sense-making or neutralizing without drift is a more universal one. Detailing the differences in the style of neutralizing without drift is an important next step in understanding the importance of culture and setting on narrative sense-making. Reflecting on the things that shape interview content across contexts sometimes adds confidence that what is heard is fundamentally truth, at least as the participants see it.

Carjackers’ Evaluations of Crimes and Self

When describing their crimes, the interviewees reported that they were motivated to carjack because they needed immediate transportation, they desired quick cash or because they wanted to joyride in their neighbourhoods (see also Topalli and Wright 2004). In addition to describing motives, the offenders offered personal evaluations of their actions, which is a common feature of offender narratives (Labov 1972). Here, we elaborate on the most common evaluations of their crimes.

‘I wasn’t really violent’ Participants made categorical distinctions between ‘real violence’ and the brand in which they engaged. Certain types of violence were beyond the pale, other forms were acceptable and juxtaposing the categories was key for the respondents (cf. Presser 2004; Hochstetler et al. 2010). Juxtaposition vested credibility in the offenders’ beliefs because carjacking was less noxious than what they ‘could have done’. Thus, for Chantey, ‘Rape and all that junk there’ was going too far, but carjacking was a different story. He claimed that he was not a violent person and that he considered a violent person some-one who, ‘Does a lot of things just for the hell of it, just for the sport. … but me, stealing [is not violent] ‘cause I have a reason’. Or as David explained, ‘When it comes to killing somebody out of cold blood for no reason—that’s not me’. He added that he has ‘shot at people. But not intentionally trying to kill them. I might pull a gun on somebody just to scare them’.

Intent figured prominently in the offenders’ perceptions of acceptable violence. Richard claimed he did not consider himself a violent person because he ‘didn’t want (emphasis added) to hurt nobody’. Leroy remarked similarly, ‘I didn’t never really intend to injure nobody. I haven’t never injured nobody. I ain’t into doing nothing to innocent people. I got a conscience’. Gerald insisted that he was ‘the most humblest person you could probably ever meet. … Still to this day, I have a lot of compassion for people’. Although Michael struck his victims in the head, strangled them ‘a little too hard, scratched them in their face, [and tussled with them] a little too much, he ain’t never shot them’ and thus did not consider himself violent. ‘I can be the coolest person you know’, he said. Gerald commented that he could ‘grab you and I know that ain’t gonna really hurt you, but I can punch you a couple [times] or hit you in your stomach to knock your wind out … That’s enough time for me to get in the car. … But I never was a violent person’. Such statements suggest that these carjackers made distinctions between doing violent acts and being violent people (Hochstetler et al. 2010). Although

CRIMINAL COMMITMENT AMONG PERSISTENT OFFENDERS

293

at University of A

labama at B

irmingham

on June 23, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/

Dow

nloaded from

they may engage in discrete acts of aggression, they still sought to portray themselves as not being violent at their core.

Sometimes, the perception of non-violence flowed from the efficiency with which the offenders enacted their crimes. This efficiency failed to endow their acts with evil. Carjacking was not really vile if committed in a calculated, methodical and purposive manner. ‘I’d just put a gun to ‘em and get it over with’, Brennon recounted. ‘Never thought I was really a violent person’. Recalling a victim he carjacked at gunpoint, Chantey ‘ just made him get out and went off with the car. … [W]hen he [the victim] seen the pistol [to his head], he basically knew what it was’. Philip claimed that because he did not really do anything gratuitous to the woman he carjacked, his conduct was reasonable. ‘I didn’t do her no wrong’, he recalled, ‘she would have probably given me [a ride if I asked] you know’. Philip said this despite the fact that the victim was so frightened during the crime that ‘she was saying her prayers. That’s when I was like, “Oh man, this lady, you know, she a nice church going woman”’. Portraying oneself in a less-than-sinister light was perhaps easiest when the selected target was deserving of victimization (Sykes and Matza 1957). As Derrick explained:

Mostly everybody I carjack was mostly drug dealers. It wasn’t really no ordinary person like you … because we know one day this drug dealers getting all his back. … As soon as we take it he gonna get it back the next day. He gonna get it back just like that [snaps fingers]. … It ain’t gonna affect them. … It would be on my conscience a while [to rob someone] that’s not in the dope game [vs. someone] that’s living the life that I’m living, you know what I’m saying.

The notion of acceptable and unacceptable victims did occasionally infuse the offend-ers’ accounts, claims that harken back to Sykes and Matza’s (1957) original conception of victim denial. Jarrett professed that old people were taboo. ‘Old, old, old, very old decrepit people, I wouldn’t touch them. I wouldn’t touch nothing of theirs, you hear. I wouldn’t do it’. Echoing this sentiment, Derrick posited that women and children were off-limits. ‘I got a momma too you know’, he said, ‘[so] I wouldn’t want nobody to do that to mine. Y’all free to go, you all exempt’. He added, ‘Kids, you safe. Men with kids … go on do your thing. We had a little morals so to speak you know’. Shawn reported aborting a carjacking in progress when he realized a child was inside the vehicle. ‘I ran up on this Mercedes Benz station wagon and when I look in the backseat they had a lit-tle girl, you know, she was lookin’ at me in my eyes. I done ran up on a little girl so I let it go. I mean children I don’t mess with. … My conscience play with me’.

Such claims of virtuousness must be greeted with a healthy dose of scepticism, however. The actual offense was not necessarily consistent with the ideal crimes they conjured in their minds or which they relayed to inquiring researchers. Offenders may claim not to target people with kids, but they would not necessarily back out after discovering young occupants in the vehicle. Although Michael insisted that he never intended to carjack a vehicle with a child inside—‘I had a guilty conscience, believe me. [I]t’s like a spur of the moment type ‘cause if I knew there was a child I wouldn’t have did it’—the way he described the offense scarcely betrayed concern for the child or his conduct.

[The victim says,] ‘I got my child’ So I’m like, ‘I don’t give a fuck.’ Which I really don’t give a fuck. I’m like, ‘Man, look give me what you got you understand, give me this car or I’m going to kill you and your baby right now. Get your baby then you walk off’. So she got her baby like I see she kind of nervous like she almost dropped her little baby.

JACOBS AND COPES

294

at University of A

labama at B

irmingham

on June 23, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/

Dow

nloaded from

Even Jarrett and Charles, who said they would not victimize old people, suggested that the real reason was more selfish than anything else: ‘It might give them a heart attack, then [I’m] up for … [a death charge]’, they reported. Indeed, a number of offenders appeared to have no compunction whatsoever about targeting innocent victims (even women and children) if the situation warranted. ‘Everything [revolves] around money and business’, Charles explained. ‘It’s business. They got it, I’ll get “em”. Women, kids, I’d still get “em”’. Indeed, Terry and his co-offender carjacked and pistol-whipped a woman who was visibly pregnant. ‘I kind of laughed at it, you know what I’m saying, but about two days later [when I got arrested], I wasn’t laughing no more’. Even Michael, who reportedly felt bad about the child-involved carjacking, recognized the intrinsic appeal of predatory violence (Katz 1988). It’s a ‘thrill knowing you can just take some-thing from somebody and see the expression on they face’, he remarked.

‘I had real reasons for violence’Casting more doubt on the offenders’ benign intentions were the lengths to which they went to make the crime successful. The contrast between claims of ‘not being violent’ and their readiness to use incapacitating force was stark. Tony thus revealed that he would have shot the woman he carjacked, but because ‘she panicked and dropped the keys and her purse’, he did not. Rufus, who carjacked a young woman he knew from his school for a ride to a rap concert, explained that ‘she was young and scared’, and that if she resisted he ‘would have knocked her clean out, smacked the hell out of her’. Chantey claimed that he would not have hesitated to use lethal force against his victims: ‘[I]f it would’ve came down to it, I’d have popped a cap in they ass’. As for Derrick, he said he probably would have shot his victim had he resisted, but because he ‘ just got out of the car and I pointed the pistol at him and he just backed up from the car and I jumped in and just smashed out’.

The most threatening aspect of carjacking, and the one to which the offenders appeared to be most attuned, was victim resistance (Copes et al. 2012; Jacobs 2013). Victim resistance is quite common despite offenders being armed (Klaus 2004). The offenders recognized that explosive violence was a tool to secure rapid compliance (Wright and Decker 1997). Yet the more ruthlessly they dominated their victims, the more likely they would have to come to grips with their conduct later—particularly when the violence began to creep into their identities as conventionally moral people.

At the time of the offense, such concerns seemed to be far from pressing. Like rob-bery in general, carjacking was a desperate solution to a pressing problem (Jacobs et al. 2003). Explosive violence, or at least its threat, was a way to remove an immedi-ate problem as quickly as possible. The use or display of lethal weapons was a simple and effective means to this end. Weapons vested the offenders’ contingent threats with credibility—which is central to securing rapid compliance (Wright and Decker 1997).

Jarrett thus put a gun to one victim’s back to get her purse and keys, at which point ‘she got tears in her eyes [and was] about to cry;’ he laid the victim on the ground and escaped with the vehicle. David hid in wait for several hours prior to his victim’s arrival; when the victim exited the car, David’s partner ‘ran up [and] pistol-whipped him. Beat him up. [He] hit him hard enough to where, dude, he didn’t shake back. Dude was in a coma for a long time. [He] ended up with brain damage’. Terry’s co-offender, meanwhile, attacked a pregnant woman while Terry stole the vehicle. ‘He hit her in the

CRIMINAL COMMITMENT AMONG PERSISTENT OFFENDERS

295

at University of A

labama at B

irmingham

on June 23, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/

Dow

nloaded from

head with a bat or pipe or something that came from outside the house’, he recalled. Even though Richard’s victim did not appear to resist, Richard manhandled him any-way. ‘I jerked him through that window like he wasn’t even nothing’, he recalled, ‘and I popped him upside the head a couple of times. I didn’t pay no mind. I just opened the door, climbed in, and I hauled it’. To initiate one carjacking, Adrian knocked on the victim’s residence. Shortly after a 2-year-old girl answered the knock, he shot the adult female victim. ‘[I] went up to the lady, held the gun up to her head, and started telling her to be quiet. I did shoot her—in the chin’.

Such actions seem to contradict the offenders’ earlier contentions of ‘not really being violent’ and make a mockery of the distinction between real violence and the conduct described herein. Although the offenders may not have wanted to engage in hurtful violence, they would readily do so if it suited their purposes or if they ‘had to’ (i.e., the victim forced them to by resisting). In this regard, David, who earlier did not consider himself cold-blooded, reportedly carjacked an older gentleman whom he perceived to be a grandfather-type figure. During the offense, the man asked too many questions, at which point David became agitated and pistol-whipped him. ‘I didn’t think it would turn out like that’, David reported. Shawn, similarly, beat a female victim in the head because she would not exit the car—‘I had to whack her, knock her out’, he recalled. ‘Blood just went everywhere’. Brennon, meanwhile, stripped his victim naked and beat him repeatedly with a gun when the victim started to resist.

‘I was out of control due to drugs’When offenders’ beliefs and conduct differed, they often blamed the discrepancy on drugs. Economic compulsion and psychopharmacological aggression have long been implicated in predatory violence (Goldstein 1985), and these forces certainly fuelled our respondents’ narratives. In short, violence was not the ‘real’ them. ‘I got a drug habit [and] … got to do whatever’s necessary’, Michael remarked. Or, as Leroy put it, ‘If it wasn’t for drugs I wouldn’t even do nothing like that’. Gerald explained that, ‘When I was on drugs I was just deranged and crazy. … [I was] not in my own mind. I just blanked out from normal, you know what I’m saying. Nothing about it was normal’. A voracious crack user, Richard explained how an evil force took over him to fuel one carjacking. ‘I guess I just had the demon in me, you know, that’s all I  can say because I  jerked him through that window like he wasn’t even nothing, and I popped him upside the head and he started hollering and kicking. My mind wasn’t right’. Engaged in the persistent use of fry sticks (marijuana blunts dipped in embalming fluid and then smoked), Shawn felt ‘invincible, it’s a feeling outta the ordinary, you know, it’s wild. On that formaldehyde, I wouldn’t let nothing stop me’. During one offense, Brennon reportedly got his victim on the ground, put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger for no apparent reason, but the gun dry-fired. ‘I was doing bad’, he recalled. ‘I was on that dope—crack. I was just so messed up on dope it was just a reaction, you know, if I kill him, I get away with it. I wasn’t plan-ning to kill him’. Although Brennon claimed he felt ‘sick’ about his botched murder attempt, he went about his business shortly afterward—trading the car for $1,100 cash and 6 ounces of crack (which he and his friends promptly smoked). Later in the interview, Brennon said, ‘it was the drugs, it wasn’t me that did it. It was the drugs that was doing it’.

JACOBS AND COPES

296

at University of A

labama at B

irmingham

on June 23, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/

Dow

nloaded from

The reckless manner in which many of these offenders committed their crimes cor-roborated the out-of-control identity they claimed to have at the time of the offense (Pogrebin et al. 2009). For as serious an offense as carjacking, many demonstrated little concern for apprehension. Derrick’s offense—committed in a grocery store parking lot in broad daylight—is emblematic. ‘Yeah it was 11 or something in the morning. You got Popeye’s [Louisiana Kitchen] right there, a lot of cars in the drive-thru waiting for they food, people coming outta Winn Dixie. Nope, dumb, that’s all I can really say I was dumb for doing it’. Overall, the offenders’ conduct was grossly insensitive to risk. Not infrequently, they committed crimes in plain view of eyewitnesses, in contexts where the intrusive potential for informal social control was high. They rarely wore masks and enacted offenses with co-offenders who could inform on them to the police. Some of their carjacking attempts failed, resulting in serious and foreseeable personal injury to themselves. Shawn, for example, was stabbed by a woman he attempted to carjack as he got in the car. Both David and Tony were fired upon by their victims; neither ceased carjacking despite being nearly killed.

When asked specifically about risk concerns, the following exchange with Richard was representative of this general lack of concern:

Q:Did one of you make any remarks that maybe you shouldn’t do this?Richard:I can’t say that we did.Q:Was there any mention of what could go wrong?Richard:No, nothing about what could go wrong.Q:No mention of the police?Richard:No, we didn’t care. Didn’t even talk about it, didn’t even come up.

When asked if he ever worried about the police, Sidney explained, ‘You know it just it’s a messed up mentality, but you just don’t worry about the police. The police don’t really be a factor. Nothing’. The potential risks of their actions were typically far removed from their thoughts (Shover 1996).

Gross insensitivity to risk is consistent with offenders whose concern for the present and general disregard for wrongs committed in the moment produced a monumental need for identity reconstruction later. Indeed, it was often only after looking back that the offenders could grasp what they did and see the wrong in it. Tony thus thought nothing of what he was doing ‘when I was out there on the streets I was just moving. [Now] I have time to think about it. I was like thinking what if it’s my mom? What if that was somebody in my family that somebody was doing this to?’ Or, as Richard put it, ‘I didn’t feel bad. Not until later, not until afterwards. I was gonna get mine no mat-ter what. I wanted my dope. Later, I really felt bad ‘cause that’s not the type of person I was raised and that drug pulls you out and you ain’t in your own mind’. For Michael, time and distance revealed the foolishness of his actions. ‘Sometimes you sit back and you laugh at it’, he explained. ‘But then sometime you get back and you like, ‘damn I don’t know why I did it’, you know what I’m saying. It’d be like sometime I be having I be switching sides you understand. I be like, ‘damn why I’m doing this’, … Then I be like, ‘Man, fuck it’s done’. You know I can’t take that back. I would have some guilt not after the fact [but] maybe a while later’. For Adrian, a violent robbery in which he shot a female homeowner after confiscating her keys in front of two very young children served as his wake-up call:

CRIMINAL COMMITMENT AMONG PERSISTENT OFFENDERS

297

at University of A

labama at B

irmingham

on June 23, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/

Dow

nloaded from

I had the gun in my pocket and I walked up to the door, a little girl answered. The lady came and I asked I need to use the phone and that’s when everything took place. [The little girls were] like a year old, two years old, so they didn’t know nothing that was going on. All I wanted was the keys. All I remember is the gun went off, you know, I fired the gun. I seen her [the lady victim] go down. When I started thinking [later] about if I could have killed that girl and I seen her little baby that put a turning point in my life.

Discussion

Three central findings emerge from the offenders’ perspectives about their crimes and their selves: (1) I’m not really that violent; (2) I had reasons for what I did and (3) I was a real menace and out of control, I had reasons for that too, but I had to be that way given the lifestyle I led. Findings 1 and 3 seem to contradict one another. It is difficult for people to claim to beat, pistol-whip and bloody their victims and then claim that they are not really violent. Findings 2 and 3 contradict Finding 1. If Finding 1 fully cap-tured their beliefs, there would be no reason for Findings 2 or 3, but the offenders still claimed they were acceptable people. Finding 3 speaks to the serious/chronic nature of the offenders we interviewed here: Impetuously violent individuals who put other people’s lives in jeopardy for monetary gain, who were open and accepting of explosive aggression, who went back to predatory crime repeatedly over time and who had little concern for authorities or others who might get them caught or injured.

The respondents’ accounts of their crimes suggested that the primary reason for using neutralizations may not be merely to free themselves from guilt as originally proposed by Sykes and Matza (1957). Instead, neutralizations allowed the offenders to portray themselves as ‘not that bad’ even when describing very bad things. Doing so seems to give offenders agency in choosing specific lines of action and in constructing a sense of self (Presser 2005 2008). In other words, they are not disembodied actors. Justifying their decisions to be violent allows them to more easily continue offending. Persistence does not merely come from removing guilt before a crime. Instead, it comes from describing crimes in a nuanced way. They can choose to act but also be con-strained by circumstance.

Neutralizations such as the ones offered here are therefore more than soft deter-minants that precede crime. Rather, they are a part of a larger sense-making process that fuels decisions to continue offending, real-time and persistently. Actors such as our carjackers can bring them up before, during and after specific offenses to make sense of being bad and being good (depending on the context and questioned behav-iours). Our findings support the claim that neutralizations are better suited to explain criminal continuance rather than initiation and that neutralization theory needs to be further theorized (Maruna and Copes 2005). Our findings also suggest that by subsum-ing neutralization theory under the larger umbrella of offender narratives, analysts can better understand the complexity of offender accounts as they relate to the interpretive aspects of criminal commitment.

Commitment in carjacking appears to relate to both the act of offending and the status of persistent offender. The fact that the offenders adjusted their neutralizations on the fly rather than simply backed out of the crime when that crime did not fit their ideals (e.g., children in car or elderly victims), and that they continued offending

JACOBS AND COPES

298

at University of A

labama at B

irmingham

on June 23, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/

Dow

nloaded from

despite encounters with resisting victims and formal sanctions, suggests that they are committed to the act itself. At first glance, their use of neutralizations to justify or mini-mize their violence may suggest that they are not committed to the status of persistent offender. But further consideration suggests that this may not be the case. Their use of neutralizations was not done in an attempt to drift towards conventionality—the modal expectation among criminologists. Indeed, the offenders were firmly anchored in their subcultural belief system and made no claims of being regular citizens. This is likely why scholars such as Topalli (2005) have argued that they do not experience guilt for their crimes. For these offenders, the use of neutralizations when discussing their acts seemed to be geared toward distancing themselves from being seen as unidimensional brutes. They accepted that they were bad when judged by conventional standards, but this does not mean they wanted to be seen as irredeemably bad.

The gratuitous violence reported here (e.g., jerking a victim through a window, attempting an execution), the selection of obviously sympathetic victims (e.g., a preg-nant woman or adults with children present) and the utter lack of concern for sanction threats seems to support the notion that these offenders liked to commit violence for violence’s sake. At the same time, denial of injury (what I did really was not that violent) and denial of responsibility (drugs made me do it), coupled with the articulation of at least some guilt, support the appearance of ambivalence long suggested by Sykes and Matza (1957).

Our carjackers’ decisions to explain their conduct in ‘traditional’ ways does not make them less committed to crime. The most committed offenders of all may be those swayed by the vagaries of the moment to commit explosive conduct, not caring about its consequences at the time, vaguely aware that they can explain it away later, doing exactly that, and being entirely open to repeating it. Our respondents knew what they were doing was bad, did it anyway, had the awareness to justify it later and the hubris to do it again despite repeated contact with the criminal justice system. Although such offenders may sound like traditional neutralizers, they are not. They neutralized but remained firmly entrenched in street culture, meaning they did not meaningfully drift. Moreover, their neutralizations seemed to rely on a morality that either was compara-tive—‘I was bad, but I could have been much worse’—or circular—‘I was bad because I was doing other bad things’. Neither reflects validation of conventional ‘morality’ nor, in a global sense, drift between conventional and unconventional worlds. These offend-ers neutralized without materially oscillating between these two worlds. If there is any movement at all, it was a qualified wobble, not drift.

We believe that the concept of neutralization without drift frees criminal commit-ment from the bonds of prospective rationality, a problem that long has plagued drift theory. By prospective rationality we mean the idea that neutralization comes before crime and triggers it (Sykes and Matza 1957: 666). Although research has questioned whether neutralization is exclusively prospective (see, e.g., Hirschi 1969), scholars have not, to our knowledge, determined whether it can be contemporaneous—i.e., whether it can occur within discrete criminal acts. Within-crime neutralization was exemplified by our respondents’ capacity and willingness to make moral choices as offenses unfolded. Continuing crimes even though children were present, or using gratuitous violence against obviously defenceless victims, betrays the evolution of crime after the pro-spective ‘involvement decision’ but within the real-time ‘event decision’ (Cornish and Clarke 1986). The temporal focus of neutralization is almost always on the involvement

CRIMINAL COMMITMENT AMONG PERSISTENT OFFENDERS

299

at University of A

labama at B

irmingham

on June 23, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/

Dow

nloaded from

decision—whether to engage in crime. The event decision—whether and how to com-mit a specific offense—presumes that neutralization already has occurred.

The fact that many offenders claimed that they wanted to avoid certain victims but seldom backed out when they unexpectedly encountered them is evidence of this emphasis on the event. The emotional and mental build-up to crime can act as a barrier or deterrent. Once an offender has successfully crossed this barrier and has enough sunk cost in the offense, s/he may find it easier to adjust his or her neutralizations ‘on the fly’ rather than abandon the crime altogether. It is easier and more efficient to find reasons for continuing an offense that goes against the ideal-typical crime than to back out and start afresh. The crime has already begun, and the inertia of the event favours adaptation, not quitting.

Neutralization without drift raises serious questions about the relationship between criminal persistence and commitment among our participants and others. Our research suggests that committed offenders may be those most likely to neutralize but least likely to drift. Drift implies that neutralization has already occurred (Matza 1964), but neu-tralization does not necessarily lead to drift. In other words, the ‘ability’ to neutralize typically precedes drift, but ability must be converted to action, and this conversion process is imperfect at best. Persistent offenders who neutralize but do not drift can do really bad things, stand back and articulate (and minimize) what they did, yet persist in the conduct over time. Among such offenders, the motion between conventional and unconventional morality is not meaningful, or the motion is so rapid, subtle, or superfi-cial as to be imperceptible. The notion that the ‘worst drifters’ (i.e., those least likely to drift) may be at greatest risk for criminal persistence is especially problematic for Sykes and Matza (1957) because their notion of soft determinism presumes just the opposite: Those most likely to oscillate between deviant and non-deviant roles are those most likely to continue offending, not the least. If criminal commitment permits neutraliza-tion without drift, account-making will go hand-in-hand with persistent criminality.

References

Anderson, E. (1999), Code of the Street: Decency, Violence and the Moral Life of the Inner City. W.W. Norton.

Black, D. (1983), ‘Crime as Social Control’, American Sociological Review, 48: 34–45.Brookman, F., Bennett, T., Hochstetler, A., and Copes, H. (2011), ‘The Code of the

Street and the Generation of Street Violence in the UK’, European Journal of Criminology, 8: 17–31.

Brookman, F., Mullins, C., Bennett, T., and Wright, T. (2007), ‘Gender, Motivation and the Accomplishment of Street Robbery in the United Kingdom’, British Journal of Criminology, 47: 861–84.

Brunson, R., and Stewart, E. (2006), ‘Young African American Women, the Street Code, and Violence: An Exploratory Analysis’, Journal of Crime and Justice, 29: 1–19.

Cooney, M. (2012), Is Killing Wrong? University of Virginia Press.Copes, H., Brookman, F. and Brown, A. (2013a), ‘Accounting for Violations of the Convict

Code’, Deviant Behavior, 34: 841–58.Copes, H., Hochstetler, A. and Brown, A. (2013b), ‘Inmates’ Retrospective Experiences

of Prison Interviews’, Field Methods, 25: 182–96.

JACOBS AND COPES

300

at University of A

labama at B

irmingham

on June 23, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/

Dow

nloaded from

Copes, H., Hochstetler, A. and Cherbonneau, M. (2012), ‘Getting the Upper Hand: Forestalling Victim Resistance in Carjackings’, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 49: 249–68.

Copes, H., Leban, L., Kerley, K. and Deitzer, J. (2014), ‘Identities, Boundaries, and Accounts of Women Methamphetamine Users’, Justice Quarterly, doi: 10.1080/07418825.2014.897365.

Cornish, D., and Clarke, R. V. (1986), The Reasoning Criminal: Rational Choice Perspectives on Offending. Springer-Verlag.

Cressey, D. (1953), Other People’s Money: A Study in the Social Psychology of Embezzlement. Free Press.

Davis, L. (2003), ‘Carjacking: Insights from South Africa to a New Crime Problem’, The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 36: 173–91.

Feeney, F. (1986), ‘Robbers and Decision Makers’, in D. Cornish and R. Clarke, eds., The Reasoning Criminal: Rational Choice Perspectives on Offending, 53–71. Transaction Press.

Fisher, R. L. (1995), Carjackers: A Study of Forcible Motor Vehicle Thieves Among New Commitments, 1985–1993. Department of Correctional Services.

Fritsche, I. (2005), ‘Predicting Deviant Behavior by Neutralizations: Myths and Findings’, Deviant Behavior, 26: 483–510.

Garot, R. (2010), Who You Claim. NYU Press.Goldstein, P. J. (1985), ‘The Drugs/Violence Nexus: A Tripartite Conceptual Framework’,

Journal of Social Issues, 15: 493–506.Gubrium, J. and Holstein, J. A. (1997), ‘Analyzing Interpretive Practice’, in N. Denzin and

Y. Lincoln, eds., Handbook of Qualitative Research, 487–508. Sage.Hirschi, T. (1969), Causes of Delinquency, University of California Press.Hochstetler, A., Copes, H. and Williams, P. (2010), ‘That’s Not Who I  Am: How

Offenders Commit Violent Acts and Reject Authentically Violent Selves’, Justice Quarterly, 27: 492–516.

Holstein, J. A. and Gubrium, J. (2000), The Self We Live By: Narrative Identity in a Postmodern World. Oxford University Press.

Jacobs, B. A. (2000), Robbing Drug Dealers: Violence Beyond the Law. Aldine De Gruyter.—— . (2013), ‘The Manipulation of Fear in Carjacking’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography,

42: 523–44.Jacobs, B. A. and Wright, R. (2006), Street Justice: Retaliation in the Criminal Underworld.

Cambridge University Press.Jacobs, B. A., Topalli, V. and Wright, R. (2003), ‘Carjacking, Streetlife and Offender

Motivation’, British Journal of Criminology, 43: 673–88.Jacques, S. (2010), ‘The Necessary Conditions for Retaliation: Toward a Theory of Non-

Violent and Violent Forms in Drug Markets’, Justice Quarterly, 27: 186–205.Katz, J. (1988), Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil. Basic Books.Klaus, P. A. (2004), Carjacking, 1993–2002. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice

Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics.Labov, W. (1972), Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. University

of Pennsylvania Press.Lejeune, R. and Alex, N. (1973), ‘On Being Mugged: The Event and its Aftermath’, Urban

Life and Culture, 2: 259–87.Maruna, S. and Copes, H. (2005), ‘What Have We Learned From Five Decades of

Neutralization Research’, Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, 32: 221–320.Matza, D. (1964), Delinquency and Drift. John Wiley.

CRIMINAL COMMITMENT AMONG PERSISTENT OFFENDERS

301

at University of A

labama at B

irmingham

on June 23, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/

Dow

nloaded from

McAdams, D. P. (1993), The Stories We Live By: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self. Guilford.

Miethe, T. and Sousa, W. (2010), ‘Carjacking and its Consequences: A Situational Analysis of Risk Factors for Differential Outcomes’, Security Journal, 23: 241–58.

Mills, C. W. (1940), ‘Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive’, American Sociological Review, 5: 904–13.

Orbuch, T. L. (1997), ‘People’s Accounts Count: The Sociology of Accounts’, Annual Review of Sociology, 23: 455–78.

Paes-Machado, E. and Levenstein, C. (2004), ‘I’m Sorry Everybody, But This is Brazil’: Armed Robbery on the Buses in Brazilian Cities’, British Journal of Criminology, 44: 1–14.

Pogrebin, M. R., Stretesky, P. B. and Unnithan, N. P. (2009), Guns, Violence, and Criminal Behavior: The Offender’s Perspective. Lynne Reinner.

Presser, L. (2004), ‘Violent Offenders, Moral Selves: Constructing Identities and Accounts in the Research Interview’, Social Problems, 51: 82–101.

——. (2005), ‘Negotiating Power and Narrative in Research: Implications for Feminist Methodology’, Signs, 30: 2067–90.

——. (2008), Been a Heavy Life: Stories of Violent Men. University of Illinois Press.Sandberg, S. (2009a), ‘A Narrative Search for Respect’, Deviant Behavior, 30: 487–510.——. (2009b), ‘Gangster, Victim or Both? The Interdiscursive Construction of Sameness

and Difference in Self-Presentations’, British Journal of Sociology, 60: 523–42.Sandberg, S. and Pedersen, W. (2011), Street Capital: Black Cannabis Dealers in a White Welfare

State. Policy Press.Scott, M. B. and Lyman, S. M. (1968), ‘Accounts’, American Sociological Review, 33: 46–62.Shover, N. (1996), Great Pretenders: Pursuits and Careers of Persistent Thieves. Westview Press.Sykes, G. and Matza, D. (1957), ‘Techniques of Neutralization: A Theory of Delinquency’,

American Sociological Review, 22: 664–70.Topalli, V. (2005), ‘When Being Good is Bad: An Expansion of Neutralization Theory’,

Criminology, 43: 797–836.——. (2006), ‘The Seductive Nature of Autotelic Crime: How Neutralization Theory Serves

as a Boundary Condition for Understanding Hard-core Street Offending’, Sociological Inquiry, 76: 475–501.

Topalli, V. and Wright, R. (2004), ‘Dubs and Dees, Beats and Rims: Carjackers and Urban Violence’, in D. Dabney, ed., Crime Types: A Text/Reader, 149–69. Wadsworth.

Wright, R. and Decker, S. (1997), Armed Robbers in Action: Stickups and Street Culture. Northeastern University Press.

Young, L. J. and Borzycki, M. (2008), Carjacking in Australia: Recording Issues and Future Directions, Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice No. 351. Australian Institute of Criminology.

JACOBS AND COPES

302

at University of A

labama at B

irmingham

on June 23, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/

Dow

nloaded from