Agency as a Cause of Crime

Abstract

Laub and Sampson's age-graded theory of social control posits that the greater is a person's agency, the less that person commits crime. But agency has a dark side as well. Some people choose to offend in order to transform their life; when this happens, agency is a cause of crime. In the present article we draw on the life course and rational choice perspectives to explore this idea. Our study is based on qualitative data obtained through interviews with and observations of offenders from socially disadvantaged areas in Cape Town, South Africa. Participants cited their offending as motivated by and effective in obtaining three kinds of status: belonging in a group, respect from peers, and wealth. Further research is needed to develop understanding of this relationship, especially in terms of how it is affected by structural conditions and culture.

Acknowledgments

We thank Christopher Sullivan for his comments on an earlier draft. This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

¹In this article we focus on how crime increases the status of offenders, but of course the opposite happens as well. For example, being imprisoned for committing an offense lowers what is known as formal respect (Black 1976). Or, losing a fight can result in less informal respect (Anderson 1999).

²For a discussion on the value of employing interviews in tandem with observations, see Lindegaard (2010).

³The first author is White and of European origin, but she had lived and worked in Cape Town two years prior to the study. Her access to social networks in the townships and her identity as someone foreign to the identity politics of the country made her position toward the respondents relatively neutral (for details, see Jacques et al. 2011).

Acronyms represent the following: “NK” is not known; “M” is murder; “AM” is attempted murder; “R” is rape; “AR” is attempted robbery; “CJ” is carjacking; “AV” is aggravated violence; “FP” is firearm possession; “FE” is fencing; “DD” is drug dealing; “CT” is car theft; “BU” is breaking-and-entering.

⁴During apartheid South Africans were categorized as White, African/Black, Colored, or Indian/Asian. Colored was a category constructed to include people who did not fit any of the other categories (Posel 2001).

⁵In practice, only one person had to be excluded from the study for this reason.

⁶The first author paid for activities done during observations, such as fast food and drinks in the shopping mall and at the beach, cinema tickets, and entrance fees to night clubs.

⁷Our coding differs from McAdams' (1992) coding list for agency, which has been used by Maruna (2001) and Healy and O'Donnell (2008) in their studies of desistence from crime. The difference is that we include attention to not only offender stories but also offender behavior.

⁸One of the three who did not see crime as an intentional choice was Kyle. He got involved in robberies and eventually killed someone because he felt provoked by the victim in a bar. He described his involvement in these criminal activities as a part of being a drug addict and therefore not something he consciously chose. This perception confirms literature suggesting that addiction presents an obstacle to the exercise of agency (Christian et al. 2009). Another offender who did not see his crime as agency, Srybulela, was convicted for manslaughter and described the situation as being present in the wrong place and time. Together with a friend he went to the friend's employer to pick up a salary, but unbeknownst to him his friend had brought a gun to rob the employer who was accidentally killed. The third offender of this sort, Ralf, went out one evening and got so upset about a guy who was flirting with his girlfriend that he ended up killing him outside the night club. He did not describe this as an aware choice but rather as the consequence of being messed up by emotions he could not control.

⁹Two offenders committed one or a few crimes and then terminated their criminal career during the period of the study. After Zanezwe had been involved in robberies and carjackings he shot a guy at close distance and never found out if he died. He did not get caught for the crime and continued with high school which he finished in 2008. In 2009 he started studying sociology at the university. Thabo hijacked a person and was caught. He was waiting trial for six months and was eventually released due to the lack of evidence. One of his co-suspects had bribed the judge to remove evidence from their files. Upon release he continued high school, became a peer educator, and got his diploma in 2009.

¹⁰Buzwe and Kyle continued their involvement in crime because of a drug addiction problem. Srybulela continued being involved after being sent to prison for manslaughter; he got involved in a few stabbing incidences described as self-defense and deterrence. Michael described continuation with crime as caused by him breaking and entering into homes as a consequence of becoming homeless after his parents died. John killed someone who was hitting on his girlfriend, which gave him a reputation for violence that dragged him into other types of crime both inside and outside prison.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard

MARIE ROSENKRANTZ LINDEGAARD is an anthropologist and researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement. Her work focuses on the social mechanisms behind violent acts and victimization, cultural explanations for crime, and microsociological approaches to violence.

Scott Jacques

SCOTT JACQUES is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Georgia State University. His work focuses on understanding crime and control through the offenders' perspective.