Introduction

The statistical and correlational findings of positivist criminology provide the following irritations to inquiry: whatever the validity of the hereditary, psychological, and social-ecological conditions of crime, many of those in the supposedly causal categories do not commit the crime at issue. The irritations also include many who do commit the crime do not fit the causal categories, and what is most provocative, many who do fit the background categories and later commit the predicted crime go for long stretches without committing the crimes to which theory directs them. To grasp the magic in the criminal's sensuality, people must acknowledge their own. The ultimate criminal project is mounted by men who culminate a social life organized around the symbolism of deviance with a coldblooded, "senseless" murder. The dominant political and sociological understanding that crime is motivated by materialism is poorly grounded empirically—indeed, that it is more a sentimentality than a creditable causal theory.