ABSTRACT
That moral considerations are, at least sometimes, involved in the decision making that initiates or precludes a criminal event is not really a discovery. Working with the materials provided by biographi cal, autobiographical, or other ethnographic accounts, one can hardly fail to notice passing references by offenders to honorable or dishon orable actions in their past or present. The most common case is that of the offender who could have done something bad but did not. “I wouldn’t shoot nobody,” one robber told Feeney (1986:62); “I won’t sell [drugs] to no pregnant woman,” a homeboy told Hagedorn (1994:211). More rarely, one sees offenders condemning their own behavior. “I would steal off anybody-anybody at all, my own mother gladly included if it meant the difference between a fix and no fix,” wrote Mannie, a “criminal-addict” whose story was recorded by Rettig et al. (1977:14). Whether in self-defense or self-derogation, these state ments attest to the existence of rules or value judgements that are, we will argue, congruent with the notion of morality.
