What are people trying to do when they commit crimes? In Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil, sociologist Jack Katz tries to get inside the criminal mind to understand what it means, feels like or signifies to do any particular crime.
At the heart of criminality Katz locates a sensual dynamic in which the person actually becomes seduced to crime, even as he himself constructs the psychological conditions he experiences as compelling.
In a provocative book that runs against the grain of conventional wisdom about what makes people commit crimes, Katz looks at all sorts of crimes--from cold-blooded murder to shoplifting, from robbery to impassioned murder, from vandalism to gang warfare--from inside the head of the criminal. Arguing against all the usual and essentially utilitarian explanations of crime as a "rational" response to external deprivations, he instead unearths the sensual, emotional, and moral attractions that compel people into "righteous slaughter," "primordial evil," "ways of the badass," and more. In his concluding chapter, excerpted in the following pages, Katz takes aim at what he calls "materialistic sociology," and argues that deviance is best explained by examining how criminals themselves regard their criminal acts.
To explore the implications of Katz's thesis in some depth, THE WORLD & I presents responses to the book from three experts. First, law professor Jeffrie Murphy (p. 346) surveys Katz's arguments and asks how his perspective will affect strategies of deterrence. Next, sociologist Robert Bonn (p. 354) comments on the insights Katz has gained through a canny synthesis of case
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