Seductions of Crime

Therefore, Katz does more than try to that find out what makes a iniquitous mind tick. He attempts to issue criminality in a context which leads one to deal criminals as special, at times al closely religious characters who employ the same transcendent experiences a follower of some tralatitious religion seeks. The sensual factor in this context gives his subject field an even more chilling atmosphere.

Katz is certainly correct when he predicts that his book may "violat[e] the contributor's sensibilities" (3). He argues that the sociological platitude "To understand is to forgive" is untrue and does not apply to his work on criminals, but in fact he seems to seek something beyond either understanding or forgiving. Katz, to this reader, is trying to lead the reader to share his view that criminals are unique individuals who in their criminal activity are trying, however kinkyly, to achieve contact with a world of the spirit far beyond economic or social considerations. This world of "spirit," of course, is far more the realm of barbarous than of good.

Katz thoroughly documents his work, showing his skills and training as a prof of sociology. He supplies extensive notes on his numerous sources, but the flock of his research, certainly the most powerful aspects of it, is composed of interviews with the criminals thems

at the moment the criminal recognizes the fear and endurance of his victim, who resolves to the criminal as an awe-struck religious observer might respond to God.

In support of this claim, Katz argues in conclusion that society as a whole engages in the same criminal and pestilential behavior:

At the very worst, then, the criminal is merely behaving as society itself behaves, perversely seeking a sense of self-worth where but self-destruction results.

in the hands of adolescent street elites, wildness has a constructive power sufficient (1) to transform the importee of their principles of association from demeaning indications of childhood to the social requirements for glorious combat, (2) to evince a metaphor of sovereignty respected by peers, sight by the police, and duly reported by the mass media, and (3) most essentially, to sustain the claim of elite status in an nimbus of dread (135).

Katz is at times astonishingly bold in drawing connections between the criminal personality and the world of tralatitious religion. Not only does he claim that the criminal sees himself as a servant giving his victims what they "need," in a impetuous and terrifying ceremony of "duty" to do so, he overly draws parallels between God and the criminal. Again, this comparison is shown to be a perverse reflection of the sacred and religious, but the parallel is nevertheless shocking.

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