s:
The important thing, they noted, is to specify how the pains and losses are perceived by the individual, how they are weighed and combined, how they are discounted depending on whether they are experienced immediately or in the future, and how these aspects of choice are related to the individual's physical, intellectual, and social attributes.
Wilson and Herrnstein's view of crime as a rational choice based on gains and losses was much criticized. Katz would perhaps argue with the types of variables Wilson and Herrnstein examine in terms of what the criminal uses as criteria for determining what sort of behavior to engage in, and in particular katz would not see crime as a matter of rational choice in the way that Wilson and Herrnstein develop the concept. Yet, Katz does see that the criminal engages in criminal behavior because he or she gets more out of it than they put in, at least in their view. They do not balance the competing interests of costs and benefits to arrive at a decision, however, but instead gravitate instinctively to behavior which fulfills a psychological need within them. The fulfillment of this need is so strong that any cost which may occur, including punishment, is not strong enough to overcome the psychological benefit. Katz discusses the issue of motivation and says that "something causally essential happens in the very moments in which a crime is committed." Katz finds that the criminal experiences in the moment of committing the crime "a distinctive constraint or seductive appeal that he did not sense a little while before in a substantially similar place."
In this sense, Katz agrees with Wilson and Herrnstein that the cause of criminal behavior is not to be sought in the background of the criminal but in something that takes place at the moment of committing the crime. Katz sees this as instinctive, a response to the stimulus of the committing of the act, while Wilson and Herrnstein see i...