Exploratory notes on criminality and emotional ambivalence

In most social and behavioral science theories, depictions of ordinary criminals tend to ignore the emotional states of offenders and the possible relationship between emotionality and criminal behavior. Theorists who do consider emotions tend to presume that crime is motivated by subconscious desires to remove guilt by being punished. This paper challenges this presumption using evidence from life-history data on criminal careers. We argue that the failure to consider the emotions of offenders leads to simplistic explanations of criminal behavior. Ordinary property offenders actually experience a great deal of emotional ambivalence concerning crime. By ambivalence we mean that despite appearent social and emotional satisfactions gained from crime, most offenders experience guilt or an enduring sense of shame.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual conference of Society for Life History Research in Psychopathology at Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 31–June 2, 1983. We are grateful to Donna Bishop, Pamela Richards, and three anonymous reviewers forQualitative Sociology for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.