"I was not sympathetic to the assumption that criminals had radically different motivations from everyone else"
About this Quote
Becker’s cool provocation is that crime isn’t a moral genre; it’s an economic decision made under familiar pressures. The real target isn’t “criminals,” but the sentimental and legalistic habit of treating them as alien minds driven by special darkness. By rejecting that assumption, he smuggles in his signature move: put the same rational-choice machinery to work on the behaviors society prefers to quarantine as pathology.
The intent is both methodological and political. Methodological, because it licenses modeling crime with the same tools used for labor supply or consumer choice: incentives, constraints, risk, expected payoff. Political, because it quietly shifts attention away from character talk and toward policy levers: the probability of being caught, the severity of punishment, the availability of legitimate income, the cost of time. If motivations aren’t radically different, then changing the environment matters more than sermonizing about virtue.
The subtext is bracingly unsentimental: sympathy can be a form of intellectual laziness. It lets institutions explain outcomes by pointing to “bad people” rather than examining how rules, markets, and enforcement create predictable responses. Becker’s line also carries a faint sting toward elites who imagine their own law-abidingness as a moral achievement rather than, say, a function of better options and lower desperation.
Context matters: Becker’s work emerged in mid-20th-century economics as it expanded into “non-market” behavior, applying price theory to everything from family life to discrimination to crime. The quote distills that imperial ambition, and also its controversy: critics hear reductionism, defenders hear a demand for testable, policy-relevant explanations instead of comforting stories.
The intent is both methodological and political. Methodological, because it licenses modeling crime with the same tools used for labor supply or consumer choice: incentives, constraints, risk, expected payoff. Political, because it quietly shifts attention away from character talk and toward policy levers: the probability of being caught, the severity of punishment, the availability of legitimate income, the cost of time. If motivations aren’t radically different, then changing the environment matters more than sermonizing about virtue.
The subtext is bracingly unsentimental: sympathy can be a form of intellectual laziness. It lets institutions explain outcomes by pointing to “bad people” rather than examining how rules, markets, and enforcement create predictable responses. Becker’s line also carries a faint sting toward elites who imagine their own law-abidingness as a moral achievement rather than, say, a function of better options and lower desperation.
Context matters: Becker’s work emerged in mid-20th-century economics as it expanded into “non-market” behavior, applying price theory to everything from family life to discrimination to crime. The quote distills that imperial ambition, and also its controversy: critics hear reductionism, defenders hear a demand for testable, policy-relevant explanations instead of comforting stories.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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