Sam did most of his criminal business in “American City” a pseudonym given to a real city. In the first couple pages of the book, Sam says, “I am going to get away from American City, too many temptations.” [pg. 2] Here, one can infer from the start that Sam was associating himself with criminals and criminal activities, hence wanting to get away from American City the home of his crimin

As Sam’s business grows, so does the amount of thieves that he has working for him, or bringing him goods. Therefore, the opportunity to commit the deviant act of purchasing stolen goods increases. If Sam has had little to no problems with a thief in the past, by the Opportunity Theory he will most likely by from them again, because the risk of something going awry in the deal is slim (the good outweighs the risk). Sam refers to these reliable thieves as “safemen”. “Same with a couple of good safemen: if they run across a good antique, they’d grab it ‘cause they knew they could unload with me.”[pg. 15] Sam goes on to say that these thieves would bring in stolen goods as many as four to five times a week, thus increasing the opportunity for Sam himself to commit a deviant act. Sam mentions that these thieves would often have any type of good to purchase, so he would try to buy from “Good Thieves”, who had specialized goods. Good thieves are described as having good stolen merchandise for sale, therefore competition between fences for the business of good thieves goes up. Because the opportunity to buy good stolen merchandise is often rare, most fences will jump on the opportunity to do so. And because the “Good Thieves” also tend to be career thieves, the risk of getting caught by authority for fences is low, due to the precautions taken by both parties. Once again, by the Opportunity theory, a fence will more than likely commit a deviant act of purchasing stolen goods. But not only do these fences feel as though they are buying something of value, they also believe that they are doing the thief a favor, and a service.

However bad his later youth may have been, Sam still held some ties in society in his early youth. His grandparents, who really were responsible for his upbringing, were strict and expected a lot of him. “The believed in work – I always helped out when I was there. No such thing as a free ride. I had to get my chores done and stay out of trouble at school. If something happened at school, the people would notify my grandparents.”[pg. 37] So, Sam’s social control lay in the hands of his grandparents – his caretakers. It was his grandparents who kept him out of serious trouble…not because they were with him at every moment, but because Sam felt a bond to society through his grandparents. His early life, does not reflect his later life though. Later in life he was stealing money from society to pay his debt to society. “It cost me alone $24,000 ‘cause we had to pay off. And during this time while we’re out on bail waiting for the trial, we was pulling safe jobs to pay the lawyers. The lawyers done their job.”[pg. 55] So Sam was using money that he had gathered through theft to pay his debt to society. Any attachment that Sam might have had earlier in his life was gone, because he was stealing from society to keep it off of his back.

“That’s when the burglary really started, with this group of guys, twelve to fourteen maybe, that I worked with. This went on for maybe two years before we all got popped. I really don’t even know how it started. We’d go out after work, fuck around, drink beer, guys showing off to each other and one thing leads to something else…and it got bigger and bigger.”[pg. 40]

Some topics in this essay:
Citing Opportunity, Opportunity Theory, Control Theory, American City, Association Theory, Social Control, Hence Opportunity, Vincent Sam, Sam Goodman, Theory Sam, criminal world, deviant act, american city, commit deviant, opportunity commit, opportunity theory, social control, deviant acts, commit deviant act, differential association, association theory, opportunity commit deviant, differential association theory, committing deviant act, social control theory,