NCJ Number
216972
Editor(s)
Mark Pogrebin
Date Published
2004
Length
371 pages
Annotation
This collection of readings in which offenders discuss their offenses and lifestyles offers a firsthand account of their motivations, criminal methods, and attitudes toward victims.
Abstract
The offenders included in this collection have committed property crimes, violent crimes, sex crimes, white-collar crimes, gang-related crimes, and drug crimes. One section of the book focuses on female offenders, specifically women who have been involved in drug crimes and street robbery. The final part of the book contains three chapters on how offenders left their lives of crime. The editor notes three stages in the process of leaving a criminal career. These are building resolve or having a new motivation to stop committing crimes, making and publicly disclosing the decision to stop living a criminal lifestyle, and maintaining the new behaviors and integrating them into new social networks. Woven into these stages are "turning points" that involve offenders' consciously experiencing negative effects from their criminal careers, the formulation of specific steps to change their behaviors, and the development of a new sense of identity associated with new lifestyle habits. The editor provides an introduction to the readings in each crime category that includes a description of the content of each reading and the research method used in obtaining the offender's revelations about his/her behaviors and attitudes. The book is intended for use in a variety of college undergraduate courses that deal with introductory criminology, criminal behavior, criminological theory, and the sociology of deviance. Author and subject indexes