This paper is both my report and review of sociologist Jack Katz's book,
             Seductions of Crime. I am quite fascinated with the ideas of criminology, so I found this
             book's ideas and stories interesting. Katz uses much logic in trying to explain things that I
             can relate to, but in many instances it seems to come across to me as if he were trying to
             make excuses for the criminals he depicts. In all of his accounts, the stories were based on
             The best way to try to prove a thesis is to use many different ways of
             experimentation and gathering data. Katz used a wide variety of sources to conclude to
             his theories. He got a grasp on the entire situation of every single criminal incident before
             he analyzed them. His information on shoplifting, burglary, and vandalism came from a
             group of university students he did a study on for three years. Most of the information he
             used for robberies came from a study done in Chicago by Franklin Zimring and James
             Zuehl. The rest of his data, which includes most of the book, was taken from graduate
             students who did their research in Eastern and Southern Los Angeles.
             Katz calls his first chapter "Righteous Slaughter". He believes most homicides are
             self righteous acts defending communal values and lack premeditation. In terms of solving
             crimes, homicides are usually the easiest to solve. Marvin Wolfgang's Philadelphia study
             supports this: "Two-thirds of the offenders in criminal homicide who were taken into
             custody by the police were arrested on the same day they committed the crime." In most
             cases all participants knew other before the murder and most of the victim's actions were
             aggressive. Katz explains that he believes because of this the victims partially cause the
             murder. In some more violent cases I would back him up, but I think that in most simple
             cases where it is only a matter of m...