ABSTRACT
This chapter describes Sam Goodman's rewards, preferences, identities, and positive attitudes connected to crime, and how they built strong personal commitments to stealing, fencing, and hustling. It discusses Sam's moral apologia for his actions, some elements of which invoke moral commitment to crime while others implicate sources of personal commitment. Most of Sam's personal commitment to crime came from positive attitudes toward his criminal activities themselves. Sam enjoyed having a reputation as a player, a "big shot," especially at the height of his career. Personal commitment to crime for Sam was that his self-concept was wrapped up in his criminal identity. Our knowledge of criminal careers and chronic offending, and of patterns of criminal behavior and organization, is at best incomplete. Confessions is, to be sure, not entirely an unimpeachable source as well. Sam shows that the reality of crime is not a television morality play, and that criminal nature, like human nature, does not come in one-dimensional packages.
