ABSTRACT
During most of America's current war on crime, political leaders have claimed that the greatest promise for effective street-crime management lies in escalating the threat and the empirical odds of punishment for offenders. Academics and political leaders who employ the language of choice to explain criminal participation typically live orderly, comfortable lives constructed painstakingly in a calculated fashion. The challenge of constructing crime-control policies grounded in notions of crime as choice would be less difficult if there was not substantial personal and contextual variation in the meaning of and attention paid to legal threats and punishment. Nor are identity, context, and mood the only factors that condition the effectiveness of threat. Both the ability and the inclination to calculate carefully before commiting crime change over the life course. When persistent thieves are incarcerated, the results sometimes are different from those intended by advocates of punishment. Persistent thieves rationalize crime and believe they can perfect criminal techniques and become successful.
