Paternoster on Human Agency and Crime: a Rejoinder to Critics on His Behalf

Abstract

When using the term "positivism" or variations thereof, we generally refer to epistemological positivism, which is consistent with the usage in Paternoster's (2017) Happenings paper. At times, however, we do reference ontological and methodological positivism. Given their close overlap in criminology, we do not find this to be problematic.

Crime, Consumption, and Choice: On the Interchangeability of Licit and Illicit Income

“…Desistance would then be hypothesized to occur as a utility from the latter decreases, for instance during the transition from adolescence to adulthood (e.g., Thomas and Vogel 2019). Specifying and measuring the parameters of this type of model (e.g., the marginal rate of substitution between a legal dollar and an illegal dollar at different points of the life course) could represent concrete ways in which to define, model, and test the role of humans agency in the desistance process (Paternoster 2017;Thomas et al 2021).…”

“…The extant literature on decision-making has typically conflated broader rational choice and deterrence by largely focusing primarily on individuals’ responsiveness to risk and costs (Paternoster 2010). Although there have been some recent development in extending our understanding of offender decision-making in response to rewards for offending (e.g., Loughran et al 2016; Nguyen et al 2021; Thomas and Vogel 2019; Thomas et al 2022), empirical evidence on the relationship between larger societal structures and social organization on decision making is woefully absent. Similarly, the cultural context in which individuals are surrounded and the values and norms of work and money play a pivotal role in decision-making regarding making and spending money.…”

“…For instance, it could be posited that individuals actively engaged in crime have two unique and distinct utility functions, one for regular consumption and one for the “pleasures of life,” both of which might be governed by illegal income though the former is only governed by legal income. Desistance would then be hypothesized to occur as a utility from the latter decreases, for instance during the transition from adolescence to adulthood (e.g., Thomas and Vogel 2019). Specifying and measuring the parameters of this type of model (e.g., the marginal rate of substitution between a legal dollar and an illegal dollar at different points of the life course) could represent concrete ways in which to define, model, and test the role of humans agency in the desistance process (Paternoster 2017; Thomas et al 2021).…”

Situational Moral Evaluations: The Role of Rationalizations & Moral Identity

“…On the other hand, classical, symbolic interactionist, and various social psychological theories offer an epistemological alternative, which begins with the assumption of human agency. Mead (1934) rejected the behaviorism in social psychology for neglecting issues of “introspection.” According to Stryker (2008:19), Mead “makes humans something other than automatons bending to intractable social forces.” Paternoster (2017:351) too rejected the notion of an offender “being acted upon and reacting to circumstances rather than one who purposefully acted.” He argued that by mechanistically emulating natural sciences, positivist criminologists have “often disconnected human beings from their capacity for action—to act freely by contemplating the choices one has, making a decision as to the desired course of action or project one wants to pursue, and then intentionally and deliberately moving toward that outcome.” Like the behavioral economists Kahneman (2011) and Thaler and Ganser(2015), Paternoster (2017) recognized the urgency to begin with realistic and descriptively accurate assumptions about the central actor and build logically consistent theories from there (see also Thomas, Pogarsky, and Loughran 2021a, 2021b).…”

Situational sources of rule-breaking acts : an analytic criminology approach

“…(2017, p. 355) From such a perspective, one cannot overestimate the role of agency in decisionmaking and the formation of rule-breaking intentions. However, see Cullen (2017), Brezina (2020Brezina ( , 2021, Piquero (2020), and Thomas et al (2021) for further discussions of agency within criminology, and Treiber (2017a) for the cognitive process of intention formation. See also Bandura (1989Bandura ( , 2006Bandura ( , 2018, who viewed agency as a domain-specific resource that agents can draw upon to intentionally produce specific outcomes, having both dynamical and situational properties.…”