Content area
Full text
Confessions of a Dying Thief: Understanding Criminal Careers and Illegal Enterprise, by Darrell J. Steffensmeier and Jeffery T. Ulmer. New York, NY: Transaction Publishers, 2005. 401 pp. $69-95 cloth. ISBN: 0-202-30760-3.
Two decades ago, Darrell Steffensmeir published his classic The Fence: In the Shadow of Two Worlds. It is a book based on extensive interviews with Sam Goodman (an alias), a fence and professional burglar, and with several of his associates. That case study provided an incisive understanding of fencing and especially of its close relationship with law-abiding society. Steffensmeir kept in touch with Sam until the latter's death in the 1990s from lung cancer.
As the title of Steffensmeier's new book, co-authored with Jeffery T. Ulmer, implies, he continued speaking with Sam until just days before his death. The new book updates and expands the earlier one, less by including Sam's final words than by including extensive material about Sam's criminal and conventional life. In effect, it is a new case study that is used to support and illustrate the authors' model of criminal behavior that integrates learning, opportunity, and commitment perspectives.
As the authors promise in their first chapter, the book makes several contributions to the fields of criminology and sociology. One of the most notable...