Persistence and career criminality: Enjoying crime!

Abstract

Despite its existence as a common-sense category and criminological analytic, the notion of the ‘persistent criminal’ remains theoretically underdeveloped. While there is a notion that particular individuals ‘commit’ to a life of crime, criminology is yet to properly articulate why this is and how it comes to be. Drawing on psychoanalytically inflected discourse theory, this article demonstrates that the clinical categories of psychoanalysis such as subject, lack, identification and jouissance (enjoyment) are useful in understanding persistence and career criminality. The imagined possibility of inhabiting a ‘fantasmatic’ lifestyle becomes unconsciously reinforced by the joyful sensations that accompany aspects of their criminal lifestyle: criminal cultural consumerism, peer group respect and appearing attractive to women. Without being conscious and rationalistic, these processes nevertheless inform self-perception and behaviour at a deep level of being. This article provides a novel explanation for why persistent criminals remain dedicated to their illicit lifestyles.

The moral and emotional world of police informants

“…Moreover, the informant could also be asked to reflect upon the circumstances underpinning their decision to take on the role – that is, the critical moments under which they were ‘turned’ by the police – including the relevance of any forms of disadvantage that they identify. It is worth noting that biographical interviews have been the dominant method in criminal career research, which includes the study of turning points (Mercan, 2020). Applying a moral and emotional framework to the lived experiences of police informants offers new opportunities to understand the effects of a state practice which may deeply impede upon, and potentially derail, individual lives and trajectories.…”

The transmission of crime as work in Turkey: Identification and strategic mutuality

“…However, as discourse refers to an ontological horizon where physical objects and past instances gain their meaning and become meaningful stories (Glynos et al, 2009: 9), there is at least a material physicality in and of which some actions come to be signified as challenge, fight, beat-up, prowess and so on. Similarly, Juba made of his reputation in the past with so many serious physical challenges and blows, ending up with stabbing or shooting, all of which become meaningful within street cultural discourse (Mercan, 2020b, 2020c) Yıldo was also walking the same pathway through fights and violent instances, striving to put up an image, strong and daring. Gossip channels spontaneously lead the way, carrying the details of the most aggressive fights from one area to another, from one person to the next: ‘Stories of violence establish and maintain hierarchies through reputation, signal participation in the field, convey values and confirm or challenge the borders of the field’ (Sandberg and Fleetwood, 2017: 376).…”

“…In so doing, it focuses on a group of lower class youth offenders in the non-Western context of Ankara, the capital of Turkey, with specific emphasis on the psychoanalytical category identification in shaping criminal habitus. In two previous articles, I discussed the process of becoming a professional criminal through the exploration of ‘conative’ and ‘cognitive’ constructs of criminal habitus, whereby the subject acquires bodily and mental criminal dispositions (Mercan, 2020c), drawing attention to the importance of the affective component of criminal habitus and symbolic identification with the model-image of criminal social types in Turkey (Mercan, 2020b). However, these papers examined the life experiences of a group of ex-offenders who had ended their criminal careers before 15 years.…”

New patterns in residential burglary: The method of deadbolt lock picking

“…It seeks to situate the SCP's recent concepts of ‘script’ (Ekblom and Gill, 2016; Cornish, 1994) and ‘resources for crime’ (Ekblom and Tilley, 2000) within Bourdieusian criminology's conceptual framework by arguing that once put into action successfully, through use by the offender as dispositions they are functionally converted into assets of criminal capital (Mercan, 2020a, 2019: 60–1; Shammas and Sandberg, 2016). The reason underpinning this theoretical integration effort is that by employing this criminal procedure, crew members can either pull off ‘big scores’ in the form of cash and jewellery whilst avoiding physical harm and arrest, transforming criminal resources or dispositions into material and symbolic gains or forms of capital (as vividly illustrated in prior papers Mercan, 2020a: 107–9, 2020b: 176–81). In what follows, I firstly outline critiques of SCP, displacement, adaptability and resources alongside Bourdieusian criminology.…”