The making of the professional criminal in Turkey

Abstract

This article explores how the subject becomes a professional criminal, setting out the life experiences of a group of (ex-)offenders in Turkey who have desisted from crime for 15 years. By analysing the socially-individuated trajectories of offenders, it analytically traces out how the primary habitus inherited from lower-class, migrant, doorkeeper cosmology fits in with the secondary criminal habitus: a bodily-mental, informally-trained capacity to carry out burglary. The formation of criminal habitus is dissected into conative, cognitive and affective components to demonstrate how specialist (physical) breaking and entering skills, maintaining composure, self-confidence, resourcefulness and fluency in the Turkish subcultural language of the street are developed in such a way as to professionalise the modus operandi of burglary. Undertaking the dispositional theory of action, the primary contribution lies in exploring the formative principles of the bodily and mental dispositions necessary to commit a criminal action in a non-Western context.

Keywords

dispositional theory of action primary habitus crime criminal habitus burglary

Introduction

Much criminology research agrees that some criminals can be defined on the basis of professionalism because they serially commit crime, hold particular skills and socialise within a criminal subculture, making crime a form of livelihood (Edelstein, 2016). The Western criminological literature is replete with typologies and taxonomies that adequately portray the socio-cultural picture of professional criminal as lower-class, male and socio-economically disadvantaged individuals (see Sutherland, 1937; Inciardi, 1975; Shover, 1996). Conversely, the field of Turkish criminology has been indifferent to this issue, and research in this subject is lacking. Nevertheless, it appears that crime seems to be an attractive choice of occupation for many in Turkey. Research on the social and cultural formation of poverty in Turkey reveals a fragile liminality between legitimate and illegitimate ways of life among the urban poor. Interviews with respondents have shown that subsisting in conditions of extreme poverty can force individuals into a position where they might perceive crime to be an effective solution to their deprivation (Erdoğan, 2007: 62):

I could kill for my children, don't forget, [and] show no mercy! Well, I can kill the moment I get a chance, just because, no [word of a] lie. But we don't do that … we're honourable, decent men! (Erdoğan, 2007: 63)

Another respondent says:

Agbi [older brother], there is something I've never done before; [but] this state [of poverty] could force me one day … I've been hungry and thirsty but I've never been a thief or a pimp. I couldn't do these things and won't … I can't do it right now, but if I'm forced to I'll have to at some point. Well, when my children become hungry, I might. (Erdoğan, 2007: 63)

One of the female respondents argues:

I would be rich if had been a prostitute but I couldn't do it. I did try. (Erdoğan, 2007: 63)

These comments make it clear that an illegitimate way of life is a viable option for members of the most poverty-stricken sections of the urban lower-class; nevertheless, it is viewed as a last resort. When considering the claim made by the urban poor, that they might become rich from crime, certain questions immediately arise: Is it possible to make a living from crime if one is forced to? Is it relatively simple to develop the necessary skill set to commit crime persistently as a form of livelihood?

Encapsulating these questions reveals a single challenging problematic: How can one become a professional criminal and sustain oneself through crime? This article addresses this problematic, setting out data from offender-based ethnographic research with a group of (ex-)offenders who specialised in burglary, and focuses on the professional dispositional formation of offenders in Ankara, Turkey. Following Loïc J. Wacquant's dispositional theory of action (2016), it introduces criminal habitus as the research topic in order to understand the micro-cosmology of those who perceive criminal activity through an occupational lens and possess crime-specific skills. It also deploys habitus as a research tool for the investigation of professional criminality by examining sedimented dispositions and their transformation into an asset in the field of burglary. To achieve this, two forms of habitus are identified through the examination of the offenders’ life trajectories, one of which is argued to be primary lasting dispositions intertwined with lower-class drudgery, rural origin, home environment, and socio-ethnic marginalisation. The primary habitus is demonstrated, through in-depth interviews, to make way for the secondary habitus, pushing individuals to resort to the acquisition of various criminal capacities and the tendency towards burgling activity: the transformation of the subject into an offender. The formation of criminal habitus is dissected into conative, cognitive and affective components (Wacquant, 2011; in particular, see Sánchez García and Spencer, 2013) to demonstrate how specialist (physical) breaking and entering skills, ‘staying cool’ (maintaining composure under stress), self-confidence, resourcefulness and learning the language of the underworld in prison develops in a way to professionalise the modus operandi of burglary. Finally, the article makes two critical contributions: first, it makes use of the dispositional theory of action in understanding the formative principles of individual criminogenic schemata in a non-Western context. Second, such an innovative notion expands the criminological perspective towards comprehending the bodily and mental capacity necessary for carrying out a criminal action such as burglary.

Data and sampling

This paper draws from the oral histories and in-depth interviews with members of a criminal gang, or crew, specialising in burglary, most of whom were actively involved in burglary from 1998 until 2003, at which time they desisted from criminal activity: they terminated their criminal career. The crew comprised seven members: Juba, Atom, Muzo, Reddy, Maddy, Harry and Lordy, whose background is largely lower-class, rural migrant, with the (male) family head finding employment as a doorkeeper, or porter, in a middle-class, affluent neighbourhood of Ankara. The crew members were all male, poorly educated (having dropped out of school at a young age), had served more than one prison sentence between them and specialised in burglary. During the research period, their ages ranged from 35 to 40. The research moves from recounts of activity in the mid-1990s when the group of (then) offenders first forged an alliance – creating a ‘crew’, through the crew's increasing proficiency – professionalism – in burglary, and finally to the desistence of the crew in the early 2000s.

In selecting the research subjects, this article shares common points with Randol Contreras's (2013) famous ethnographic research: Not only did I live in the same area where the crew was active, I also regularly socialised with most of them. As the youngest son of a civil servant [memur], I grew up in a middle-class neighbourhood; it was during my adolescence living in this neighbourhood that I got to know many participants in this research – they called themselves the Azros [Azrolar]. This was a crew that was openly known to be involved in delinquent activities, whose members would serve time in prison repeatedly for alleged gun crimes or extortion. The Azros’ reputation and respect was widespread among youths in and around the neighbourhood; the crew could be found hanging out on park corners, drinking alcohol, sniffing glue and inciting fights. They were simultaneously feared within the community and admired and respected by other young men. In addition, and perhaps counter to expectation, the leader of the Azros often instigated and participated in informal football games where many local youths joined in; this activity appealed to me instantly and allowed me to get to know the crew better. My acquaintance with many of the crew members stemmed directly from this initial contact whilst playing football. As a member of the neighbourhood youth, I was keen to hang out with these ‘dangerous guys’ – just like any other boy. The ambition to possess ‘fame’ through fights and various other acts of bravado was my primary goal. Much of my adolescence was therefore spent hanging out: smoking, boozing and pretending to be a tough guy were the main activities I engaged in through admiring and emulating the ‘big brothers’. Before long, I was ‘invited’ to join the informal, chatty drinking sessions on the park corners with some of the crew members. In the eyes of the Azros I represented an ‘educated boy’ with a promising future, in stark comparison with the deprived social background of the majority of my mates; nevertheless, I had earned some level of respect. In time, the frequency of our social interactions decreased, and our trajectories diverged. Having never moved out of the residential area, my infrequent contact with the crew nonetheless continued through my adolescence and into adulthood. Throughout the 17 years of my, albeit discontinuous, contact with the crew (1998–2015), I have had the unique opportunity to observe changes in the research participants’ trajectories first-hand. This naturally occurring situation obviated the need for me to recruit persistent offenders unknown to me: an undertaking with some risk. As a direct result of long-established rapport and trust, the crew members consented to participate in a criminological research project. The interviews with each crew member were conducted as a one-to-one conversation of which an audio recording was made with the subjects’ permission. While the participants were allowed to talk freely using their own concepts and terminology, the questions focused on how they initiated a break-in, the locations and sites chosen for burglary, whether they organised themselves into distinct roles, how and when they used tools, and the emotional experience they went through before, during and after the burglary. All interviews took place over a seven-month period in 2014–2015. The length of these interviews varied from 12 minutes to five hours. Recorded conversations were later transcribed verbatim into Turkish; transcripts were coded and translated into English where necessary.

The formation of primary habitus

Habitus refers to a scheme of dispositions which mediate the coordination of social structures and individual practice (see Bourdieu, 1977, 1990). The root of this concept, the Greek word hexis, implies an acquired but empowered moral character which directs our feelings, ambitions (desires), and actions in any given circumstance (Wacquant, 2004b: 315). The family is the primary milieu wherein this moral and carnal character is built and dispositions unconsciously gained. Largely inherited from the family, habitus is a set of acquired generative capacities that remain extremely malleable and adaptable to different social universes, forging corporeal and mental dispositions in such a way as to generate social practice not as a result of structural imposition, or of a purely subjective intention, but of a dialectical relationship between situation and disposition (Wacquant, 2004c, 2011, 2014a). Developing Bourdieu's theory of practice, Loïc J. Wacquant reveals the formative conditions for a secondary habitus in which individual bodies are moulded through constant exposure to the same conditioning through a pedagogical training, which inscribes the spirit of collective in individual bodies – consider the manufacture of pugilistic habitus (Wacquant, 2004a) and of martial and combative sports (Sánchez García and Spencer, 2013). Habitus thus refers to:

[T]he way society becomes deposited in persons in the form of lasting dispositions, or trained capacities and structured propensities to think, feel, and act in determinate ways, which then guide them in their creative responses to the constraints and solicitations of their extant milieu. (Wacquant, 2004b: 316)

As with Wacquant's theoretical formula, the formative principles of lower-class, rural family milieu were observed to be instrumental in shaping the research participants' lasting dispositions leading up to their later criminogenic-trained capacities. Juba, Muzo, Harry, Atom, Maddy and Reddy all come from rural proletariat families who migrated to Ankara as a direct result of economic hardship. In an attempt to escape poverty and seeking a better life, the families of the crew members came to the capital city. Many such migrant families settled in Ankara during the neo-liberal economic transition of the mid-1980s: the worst period of economic uncertainty and collapse in real wages experienced in modern Turkey to date (Boratav et al., 2000). New migrants were forced into poorly-paid, unskilled and informal (grey economy) employment. However, the families of the crew were able to find homes and employment through solidarity and the safety networks afforded by kinship relations (see Kalaycıoğlu and Rittersberger-Tılıç, 2000a; Erman et al., 2002). While the male head of the family eased their social and economic hardship by securing a permanent position as a doorkeeper (porter) [kapıcılık] to an apartment block within middle-class neighbourhoods, female householders took paid work as domestic cleaners [gündelikçi] for the same middle-class apartments (see Kalaycıoğlu and Rittersberger-Tılıç, 2000b).

The role of doorkeeper is intrinsic to the multi-storey [apartman] housing pattern found throughout middle-class quarters in Turkish cities. The doorkeeper provides maintenance and security to these apartment buildings, and his wife provides domestic service to the residents (Özyeğin, 2002: 46). The living quarters for the doorkeeper's family are located within the apartment block, and are usually part of the dark and damp basement, close to the building's boiler room. Living beneath and working for the residents places the family in a lower socio-spatial category. A strong sense of inferiority is imposed not only by socio-spatial deployment but also by the attitudes of middle-class residents. All research participants have vivid memories of traumatic class relations with the apartment residents. Some examples:

Apartment residents would treat you like a cute kid of the poor family. You're a child, but in the end [only] the child of the doorkeeper. They would make you feel [like] that by the way they looked at you when they got angry when you fought their boys, by their being contemptuous of you and reminding you that you're a second-rate human being. All I know is that they made you feel like that either by the way they spoke to you at that moment, or telling you off without considering their kids might have started it, without talking about it [to find out what happened] … things like that. (Maddy)

Of course, the [outside of the] building used to be washed down once a week; all my family would come out and scrub the whole building. … The whole family had to do it. There were five of us and we all got together to do the whole building. We were just earning money. We were always looked down on [ezik]. (Reddy)

Juba, Muzo, Harry, Atom, Reddy and Maddy lived in an affluent neighbourhood, but as the children of doorkeeper/cleaner families. This radical distance between self and space expanded much more for the Kurdish migrants than other disaffected member in the crew. It was during the peak of the implicit warfare in the south-eastern regions of Turkey between the politically-motivated Kurdish resistance and the Turkish state. Hundreds of thousands of Kurdish people were forcibly displaced by the Turkish army and migrated to the western cities of the country (see Ayata and Yükseker, 2005). However, despite settling outside the region of conflict, Kurdish migrants continued to experience ethnic discrimination. Many poor Kurdish people were subject to public prejudice and stigmatisation. Even today a survey conducted by KONDA political and social survey (2011) reports that almost half the Turkish respondents never wanted a Kurdish neighbour, relative, or business partner, whereas a significant portion of the Kurdish respondents registered that they could not freely express their ethnic identity. During the 1990s it was clearly more challenging for Muzo and Juba, with a Kurdish background, to integrate than it is now, particularly in the immediate vicinity of home (the apartment block and in school). Ethno-social exclusion seems to have taken place more overtly in public spaces. Muzo's retrospective self-evaluation indicates how the imagery of poverty and ethnic origin was enmeshed in their appearance and formed a stark contrast to the visual identity of a middle-class area:

I now understand Grapeyard [the crew's neiwgbourhood] is a swanky, peaceful area where retired [professionals] and public servants live. They never came across scumbags [pislik] like us! (Muzo)

In Muzo's comment, the word pislik signifies the realisation of a socially disgraced position: being wretched, unkempt in appearance and inseparable from his Kurdish accent, while also marking out how he internalised socio-cultural hierarchies that have determined his sense of self-worth. Here the ethnic discrimination integrates with the disadvantaged lower-class position. However, while they saw themselves as worthless and insignificant, the sensual feeling of inferiority and denial was simultaneously embodying their outrage and hatred. Juba summarised this:

The problem is they had ‘things’ but I didn't. I envied them. When I was little I didn't have a bicycle. I saw [their] shiny gears and all that stuff and their families on their side, and I decided I would take it [the bike] if my family couldn't buy me one. I would have it anyway, and take it by force! (Juba)

With these negative affects and the sense of resentment, the early group dynamic and familiarity between the young adolescents who later became crew members was initiated whilst finding small jobs in the fruit and vegetable market [pazar] – each member of the family was expected to contribute to the family's income from a very early age. Congregating on street corners plying for cart-driving jobs, or providing shoe-shining services amidst the hurly-burly of the market solidified the sense of in–distinction for the research participants. Among the disadvantaged boys, the fundamental awareness of their lower-class status played a constitutive role for a collective identity in the street. Not only did this support the solidarity among the lower-class boys, it also inflamed the discursive split between the poor ‘Us’, and the rich ‘Other’ – put in their terms, between gariban bebeleri [poor guys] and zengin piçleri [rich bastards] – in the neighbourhood social spaces such as parks and school playgrounds.

The school space also compounds and perpetuates the ethno-class injuries and humiliation experienced in the middle-class apartment space; the middle-class school space turned out to be another arena for discrimination:

As I said, you're [a] poor guy, so the teacher knows you. Every teacher knows whose mum and dad do what. For example, what she did to me [she] never did to any rich children. (Harry)

When we went to school, we were all asked our names, and surname, and what job our fathers did. What a weird thing to ask! … When I said ‘doorkeeper’, everybody kind of reacted against me … The way that those people [children] looked at me when the teacher asked me about it, and then [afterwards] that teacher's relationship with me was different to the others. (Maddy)

Muzo recalls that one day the P.E. teacher insulted Muzo and a group of disadvantaged Kurdish children in front of the whole school because they were not wearing P.E. kit or appropriate sportswear, but patched uniforms and cheap, black plastic shoes. Juba remembered a similar experience:

I had [a pair of] cheap black plastics [shoes], too. I went to primary school wearing them … I was really upset when other boys laughed at me. I came home and cried! … There was a boy whose name is Deniz. They were playing a game in the school courtyard … I went out and stood watching them. That boy said ‘go away, you're not playing with us!’. That [event] stayed in my mind ‘til secondary school when I beat him up and reminded him of that day.

Juba's account indicates that injurious class encounters did not only take place within the home environment of apartment buildings but also in school. These injuries remain as humiliating events inscribed in their mind, which would later be converted into resentment instigating their anti-social behaviour in the neighbourhood. Both materially and discursively ethno-class marginalisation has led them to think of violence and crime in unrestrained street socialisation as the only viable solution to their material wants. The research participants converted all exclusion and marginalisation into violent, predatory dispositions, which culminated in collective usurpation sessions in front of the school gates – fights and violent bullying instigated by the street gangs against their rich school peers. Perpetual marginalisation habituated at school, at home and in public spaces became a weapon against the ‘rich’ Other. Usurpation was full of fun and excitement, as well as offering emancipation from shoe-shining and menial tasks in the market.

Afterwards, there were loads of us: Kareem, Muzo … eight people. We were all going to beat up [further education] students. We picked on one then another. We were like cannibals [laughing]. For instance, we waited at the school exit, and then said ‘let's do that faggot’ and shouted ‘get over here lan!’ [exclamation statement]. He started running away but we chased and cornered him. Then while one of us was holding him, two, three searched his body, finally we really fucked him over. (Juba)

This panoramic picture of the early youth of participants clearly illustrates a smooth transition from the lower-class primary submissive dispositions structured within the middle-class, authoritative apartment and school milieu to the delinquent, defiant street cultural habitus. Kneaded in the matrix of forced labour, parental indifference, strong ethno-class discrimination and violence, the participants resorted to street association. They began searching for ‘lost’ self-respect in glue-sniffing, smoking, drinking, fighting, and petty theft. As their behaviour escalated from 1990 to 1995, they were seen to become increasingly dangerous, and local police and schools’ head teachers paid more attention to these ‘street kids’ – attention that included a level of surveillance. In the process of losing much of the ethnic-cultural norms of decency and honesty in this self-destructive and violent vortex, they were restoring their own sense of being by spreading fear in and around the neighbourhood. The street remained the only recourse to reclaim the respect they could not earn from white, Turkish middle-class legitimate culture. The street would also pave the way for professional crime and criminality.

The formation of criminal habitus: First steps towards professionalism

What is common to each individual trajectory is that the crew members spent much of their time together in various delinquent activities led by Juba, like fighting and victimisation, but were also influenced by Muzo and so played football and sports together. What they all remember now is the sheer enjoyment they got from being delinquent and criminal, glue-sniffing by Juba, Harry and Maddy, bullying neighbourhood boys, picking on people in general and displaying a high level of aggression. This required them to display a mafioso-style image. The necessity of proving themselves – both individually and as a group – heightened the crew's criminal tendencies. The source of material affluence which completes the image would be created through the theft and burglary that the crew contingently explored. Moreover, this illicit method of income would pave the way for the acquisition of long-lasting dispositions that could sustain their life, exactly as if they were in a profession.

The emergence of professional criminal habitus can be dissected by analytically examining cognitive, conative and affective components of habitus (Wacquant, 2014a, 2014b; Sánchez García and Spencer, 2013). These three components give shape to the modus operandi of burglary carried out by the crew through late adolescence to early adulthood. The ensuing dispositions from countless burglary attempts prepare the crew for later professionalisation, placing burglary within the perception of primary subsistence and allowing them to possess necessary skills and attributions.

Criminal habitus: Conative component

Cognitive psychologists suggest that expertise in crime is no different to any other legitimate form of expertise. Expertise lays out a representation of knowledge and skills in memory and its performance through behaviours (Nee and Ward, 2015: 2). Residential burglars are argued to have a certain structural representation of knowledge and skills in mind, functioning like a ‘script’ of criminal actions (Logie et al., 1992; Wright and Decker, 1994; Nee and Meenaghan, 2006; Nee, 2015). These studies, however, only observe and identify the expertise of burglars in mind and entirely neglect the ‘techniques of body’ (Mauss, 1973) – corporeal bodily absorption and extension of expert cognition in crime.

The analysis of the conative part of habitus fills in this lack as it shows us that rendering abstract scripts necessitates bodily training and manipulating the perceptive schemata of burglary. This conative part ‘consists of proprioceptive capacities, sensorimotor skills, kinesthetic dexterities that are honed in and for purposeful action’ (Wacquant, 2014a: 8). The direct-learning process develops a trained, proficient body through a proper cultivation of that body towards a certain goal. The absorption of burglary techniques seems to be the long-lasting result of bodily habituation; Juba's initiation into burglary that would later spread to the others is a worthwhile subject for analysis.

Around 1994–95, when the crew came into being, Juba states that he began to take leisurely strolls around the neighbourhood. When he saw an open window, he would reach in through the bars to grab anything precious. Juba often used a piece of wood or similar tool to manoeuvre items within reach; mobile phones and purses were seized using this method on many occasions. He later began to push windows and doors to see if they were locked – he also used to practise these tests with his fellow crew members. Such trials not only prepared his bodily (hexis) affinity with the instigation and repetition of breaking and entering attempts, overcoming anxiety and a sense of insecurity originating from breaking the law, but also developed motor function skills between the body and various tools to complete acts of burglary (see Bourdieu, 1977: 87–91).

Individual bodily training took a collective form by sharing bodily affinity with burglary with his peers: Atom was Juba's best friend, keeping him company during Juba's forays into the apartments' back rooms. Atom had a short, wiry build, and was quite athletic; as neighbours, he and Juba had become close friends. His facial expression was far from intimidating, smooth skinned and gentle looking, in contrast with his associate's hirsute and more masculine appearance. Juba and Atom would go to the gym every day, focusing on strength exercises and training using free weights. As well as training together, Juba and Atom were learning basic methods of breaking and entering on a trial-and-error basis. Some of those trials were simple and relatively unplanned: checking if a door was left open, shoving a window open further and kicking doors in. Criminal dispositions of burglary began to thrive in this way, developing a habitual engagement with window poles, balconies and door handles. The participant accounts suggest that Atom was not initially a member of the crew but would later become a fully-fledged Azro. The break-in practices of Juba and Atom spread to the other members of the crew rapidly but were rather blurred in distinction with game-like activities.

At Juba's instruction, Juba, Harry and Maddy had been climbing trees and scrumping fruit from apartments' back gardens – a typical adventure for generations of little boys in the neighbourhood. However, for the crew, these pilfering and snacking sessions often developed into opportunities to steal clothes from balconies. Another seductive reason for entering the back gardens, as the accounts suggest, was peeping at naked women through windows: for the crew it was a joyfully voyeuristic form of youth delinquency. Muzo's accounts point out that it was Juba who was the first of the crew to sneak into a flat; he had already been doing so before forging friendships with the others. Sneaky crime became quite exciting, arousing extreme feelings (see Katz, 1988) – no doubt this rush encouraged the crew. In 1995, the crew graduated from scrumping fruit to stealing shoes and jeans, and ultimately from furtive, opportunistic open-door thefts to full-blown residential burglary. It seems that during this phase, the crew's perception of back gardens began to evolve from a site of exciting adolescent delinquency and petty pilfering to actual criminal opportunity:

[Muzo and Juba] must have checked that place in advance and identified the window was open. We first entered through an open window, went upstairs, took everything in the cash register, and anything we wanted, from chocolate cakes to Kinder Surprise Eggs. That was so much fun … things always started like this. Because of the kick we got out of it [burglary], we began searching for new places to burgle, to break in and take something, and to spend more [money] and do whatever we wanted. The aim was just to hang out and be cool [kaynatmaktı], and burglary turned into a joke and a game. (Maddy)

This account underlines that the break-ins were committed in a joyful game-like manner with much clamour. Each member viewed it from within the perception of adventure and risk-taking. Upon entering, while Muzo was indifferent to valuables and primarily interested in finding food, Juba was the only one among them systematically searching for cash and gold. Harry and Maddy shared similar goals to Muzo. The crew never seriously considered the illegal aspect of these game-like activities because it created so much of a collective thrill and ‘edgework’ (see Ferrell, 1998). However, it is also a collective bodily-learning process that thrived due to continual trial and error (see Wacquant, 2014b).

The crew would meet almost every evening and dash into back gardens of apartment buildings in the quarter. The number of burglaries would amount to countless crimes:

I tell you we did thousands [of break-ins; with heightened pitch] … Every day! Every day! A few [scores per day]. (Maddy)

These activities were normalised and came to embody certain dispositions:

First, second, third [trials before a successful break-in] … then what it [practice] gives you is experience, it gives you self-confidence. Nothing happened [we didn't get caught] at the first [break-in], then [we didn't get caught at the] second, and then [we still didn't get caught at the] third! (Muzo)

The account demonstrates that bodily affinity and habituation reinforced the mental and cognitive state the crime required. The accounts suggest that they all feared the possible repercussions of burglary, but also that they gained both self-confidence and resourcefulness in the act (see Steffensmeier and Ulmer, 2005). Self-confidence helps the crew stay calm and collected – to be brave – during illegal activity. It shapes a cognitive schema that appeases anxiety and normalises the illegal activity undertaken. Resourcefulness generates sensitivity to an immediate environment and forms a creative capacity to find a way to break and enter by using tools and items found close to hand. This immediate alertness would be moulded into their cultural criminal capital.

Before 1998, the crew's exploits had been restricted to the neighbourhood borders as the motivation was simply the pursuit of excitement. It had been neither a systematic commitment nor search for income but rather contingent on and consisting of easy targets requiring little effort. At first, the locations targeted had ranged from school canteens to ground floor flats whose entry is simple and where there is no apparent deterrent. With no concern regarding external deterrents, the crew practiced a ‘kick-in’ technique on doors and windows (see Letkemann, 1973: 52). With no equipment of their own, they had used any item in the immediate vicinity such as shovels, sticks or bars, or any building hardware left by chance in the back gardens. In those early break-ins, criminal bodily dispositions developed through sedimentation of simple moves. The increasing practice of burglary invigorates the ability to swiftly select burglary-related clues, ‘automaticity,’ and raises ‘situational awareness’ through countless repetitions of burglary (Nee and Ward, 2015: 2–3).

During the initial break-ins, the crew did not keep quiet, but made a lot of noise, cracked jokes and engaged in numerous mischievous acts. Defecating in the garden before the break-in became another habit (see Wright and Decker, 1994). However, ‘grappling’ the handles of backdoors and ‘pushing’ windows were to become the conative spring of professional criminal conduct in the later phase of their criminal career. During this formative period, the crew's abilities can therefore be categorised as novice or unskilled with regard to the use of technique and equipment (Repetto, 1974; Letkemann, 1973; Cromwell et al., 1991; Nee and Taylor, 1988; Nee, 2015). Nevertheless, none of them were caught red-handed in any of these burglaries. However frivolously they behaved, they were bodily trained to jimmy doors, pry open window frames and perform as a good lookout. All these skills refer to the conative parts of the crew's criminal habitus and would form the rudimentary base of their criminal capital. Their sense of burglary as work was gradually and continually developing through repetitive acts of burglary. Nonetheless, this sense of professionalism would be more complete only once the discourse-practice of the underworld had been recognised as a result of successive imprisonments of some of the crew members.

Criminal habitus: Cognitive component

The cognitive component of habitus is defined as ‘the categories of perception through which agents cut up the world, make out its constituents, and give them pattern and meaning’ (Wacquant, 2014a: 8). This analytic category, frequently used by Bourdieu, explains the way in which an individual becomes a master in classifying things, persons and actions into a special semantic level (see Bourdieu, 1977: 78–87).

Countless experiences of the same burgling practices reinforce the cognitive scheme of action. The period of 1996–97 marks a critical turning point for the crew as each member unconsciously internalised how to identify which flat should be burgled from the back garden. Here the architecture and spatial conditions play a crucial role (Brantingham and Brantingham, 1993, 2004). The break-in techniques in burglary are bound up with the architectural traits of houses. Burglary has been overdetermined by the form of multi-storey houses [apartman] that are a unique product of the urbanisation process in Turkey. These apartment buildings are typically four to five storeys in height with a communal walled back garden. These apartment blocks are found throughout the affluent areas of the capital, including the crew's neighbourhood, and the crew's script of burglary was developed through exposure to very similar building environments, differing only in topographical conditions. The early game-like burglaries provide young offenders in general with mental dispositions that orient them unconsciously to select which flat should be targeted. Practising break-ins using the same method(s) but in different neighbourhoods developed the research participants’ ‘pre-conscious scanning of environment’ and immediate cognitive processing of obtained environmental information (Nee, 2015).

The other cognitive paradigm is that where the intrinsic signification schema of the illegitimate realm occurs. Prison experience reshapes a crew member's classificatory schema regarding things, persons and techniques. Acquiring this intrinsic layer of criminal habitus refers to the transition from the game-like, thrilling perception of burglary to a more business-like perception of crime. A chain of successive criminal convictions that inculcated the new break-in techniques and reinforced the discursive and symbolic structure of the illegitimate fields fortifies the notion of crime as work in the peer milieu of the crew. The critical breaking point in the biographies occurs in 1997 when some crew members were arrested on charges of burglary: Juba, Atom and Maddy were charged with burglary and arrested together with Muzo's younger brother Kareem while Muzo was serving his army conscription in 1997. Juba remarks:

When we first went to prison, there were loads of guys more amazing, better than us at this stuff. Guys used to tell us [things] … we were shocked. Those guys explained [the] open-door [method], for instance. But we didn't know that open-door was such and such. ‘Coz we were already sneaking in through an open door. Allah Allah! [Exclamation of perplexity] This would be the open-door [method], good, and you do it in summer; for instance winter work is something else [he simulates he is learning]. For example, you use a crowbar – they told me [about] the crowbar, that is, steel screwdriver. I heard it all from them. We had gone about it helter-skelter when we had done it [burglary]. … [Before prison] for example, if the door was secured, let's say, with a padlock, we would break it apart by using a bar or stick [we found lying around].

Q: Or a screwdriver?

No, no screwdriver at all. We didn't carry it with us at that time. We didn't know [about] it anyway.

Q: How about fingerprints?

We didn't care about that at all!

Reddy explains how the prison functions like a school where a convict gains more experience than ever:

Q: Do you think prison is very informative?

Yes, indeed. It encourages you to learn other sorts of crime. Someone comes and says ‘when I was a nailer, while counting [the] money, [I would] surreptitiously palm some of it, but you don't understand’. Another comes along and says ‘I wedge a screw-driver into the frame’ [making sound and using a hand gesture], he's just doing the same thing as us. He says ‘it's much easier this way’. And another comes and says ‘I open the window like this’. One more comes and says ‘we did intimidation like this’ … all [this information] constantly pushes you further down [the path of] crime. There's no chance of reformation at all.

Knowledge is conveyed from one experienced person to another because the prison functions like a school, as many studies indicate (Shover, 1973, 1996; Letkemann, 1973; Tunnell, 2000). Prison is one of the pillars that supports the criminal habitus of the crew by setting up the mental schema of improved modus operandi of burglary. Such knowledge of efficacious techniques of breaking and entering – cultural criminal capital (Steffensmeier and Ulmer, 2005: 131) – are put into circulation among the crew as a whole through those members who serve prison sentences. In this network, the prison experience thus inculcates an offender not only in how to signify actions and objects properly within various illegitimate fields, but also how to perform crime better. The prison interaction, while instilling the subtleties and details of burglary techniques, such as ‘open-door’ [açık kapı] and ‘closed’ [kapalı], structures the illegitimate realm as a field in which it becomes possible to rank, say, house burglars [ev işçisi] according to their branch and volume of dexterity – criminal capital. Consequently, the discourse of the illegitimate constitutes criminal practices so as to enable the number and quality of jobs, networks, skills and time served to become viable assets. These gain meaning within an intrinsic cognitive schema of the discourse/practices of the illegitimate realm whose agents internalise its value and see these assets as worth an investment in the field.

The discourse of the illegitimate operates metaphorically/paradigmatically. In any conversation with the crew members, it appears that the discursive reconstruction of previous illegal performance retrospectively replaces conventional signifiers. The Turkish subcultural argot substitutes certain signifiers at the paradigmatic axis of language, e.g. a house burgled becomes a ‘job taken’ [iş almak] or ‘blown up’ [patlatmak]; in this nomenclature, burglars are called tufacı or dızo, money stolen from house fitik, police zarbo, the lookout on the job erkete and so forth. Viewed simply as street slang, this peculiar discourse equips an offender with lenses by which he can also synchronically further filter any performance within the signification chain of the illegitimate realm [gayrımeşru alem]. Every flat, balcony, door, nook and cranny comes to be evaluated within the logic of the illegitimate realm, of criminal insight and, as such, whether it can be ‘ripped off as a score’. Clearly, any subcultural glossary in this regard not only corresponds to another realm of symbolic communication, it is also a field of affects carried by subculturally-intrinsic signifiers, as these utterances convey some feelings of excitement and pride when mentioned in and around the illegitimate networks [gayrımesru ortamlar] comprising young men. This can be considered as the discursive symptom of internalisation of criminal insight and resourcefulness that the illegitimate fields demand as a capital (see Steffensmeier and Ulmer, 2005: 130).

The most crucial result of an intrinsic signification of the illegitimate realm is that all research participants think of burglary as work and semantically construct this work in a specific way. When it comes to describing the activity of breaking-in, they enunciate it as ‘going [out] to work’ [işe çıkmak]. For instance, Muzo highlights:

We never said we were thieving over the course of time we did it. We never said ‘let's go and steal stuff’ when we talked about it. Instead, we used to say ‘let's get underway’ [yoluna gidek] or ‘let's go to work’ [işe çıkak].

Q: Why did you call it ‘work’?

You see it as work because you earn your crust from it. One way or another. I always say, my brother, whatever you do in this world, either get your ass fucked, or you are fucked over, [but] whatever you do, if you earn your living from it, you've got respect no matter what your job is.

In all interviews and fieldwork contacts, ‘the going out’ [yoluna çıkmak] and ‘running the business’ [koşturmak] have become the typical phrases to describe any illegal operation if it is viewed as an income-generating activity. The interview with Alex (a later addition to the crew) exemplifies this:

Q: Why has the terminology of ‘getting underway’ or ‘going to work’ been settled on?

In fact, the bottom line is that I mean … going to work, you know, working. That is how they think of it. They think they are in fact working.

Q: Who's ‘they’?

I mean our guys. The guys are working! Muzo once used to pay for insurance. He sorted out social insurance for himself. Just think about that! You get insurance from this work. Is there anything like that? Yes! He used to get it done. He's really earning his living.

What is key in these conversations is that the understanding of property crime as work is fixed by combining deeds both legitimate (paying insurance premiums) and illegitimate (theft). The intrinsic signification schema of the illegitimate realm turns conventional codes upside down and redefines modalities according to its own logic as a heterodox field. So long as it is viewed as such, the discourse of the illegitimate reconstitutes the deeds of the subject. Given the signifying impact of the prison experience and illegitimate realm, it is apparent that the construction of burglary as work becomes possible from within discourse by re-constituting the meaning of action as well as the value of skills and attributes in the form of asset–capital.

Criminal habitus: Affective component

The affective component of habitus refers to the aspiration of an individual to be part of a specific microcosm. Wacquant argues that this ‘libidinal’ and ‘cathectic’ part of habitus ‘entails the vestige of one's life energies into the objects, undertakings, and agents that populate the world under consideration’ (Wacquant, 2014a: 9). The interviews with the participants uphold the notion that committing burglary cannot be separated from the crew's affective investment in a mafioso image: in Turkish subculture, a gayrımeşhur [a notorious criminal]. However, affective investment and aspirations are also embedded in the material gains of the burglary. The prospect of possessing long-desired goods and the fantasmatic probability of securing a valuable haul inside the flats would catalyse the crew's enjoyment:

But I was attracted by something; my greatest prize turned out to be: Kinder Eggs! My dad never bought me a Kinder Egg. Neither did my mum. But a Kinder Egg was my dream. Why? A toy comes out of the Kinder Egg, chocolate comes out. Throughout my childhood, I never had a toy! … My sweet money came from burglaries and it was really enjoyable [spending it]. Cash money! And you have never seen perfume bottles [like it]; there were the most fashionable perfumes, as I said, the dresses and clothes in latest fashion [inside houses broken into]. It was as if you had entered a clothes shop. I mean it was like as if you had been a rich man who went into a boutique. I mean you can take anything you want. (Maddy)

Also you started wearing proper shoes. You changed from cheap black plastic shoes [karalastik] to a pair of Adidas. (Muzo)

The crew's experience of burgling, particularly stealing, cannot be squarely placed without considering consumerist identifications embodying the fantasy of ‘the rich man in the boutique’ above. The nexus of crime and consumerism (Hayward, 2004) accordingly plays a definitive role. This reveals the ideological–hegemonic grip of advertisement and consumption in which the dynamics of enjoyment of consumer culture are embedded (Stavrakakis, 2007: 227–51). Such enjoyment, while sustaining criminal fantasies, instrumentalises burglary to which the crew would demonstrate commitment. More importantly, a bodily-sensual experience reinforces commitment to internalising the necessary burglary dispositions.

Affective investment in deviant behaviour constitutes the nucleus of the crew's commitment to crime, specifically burglary. Here, commitment alludes to the crew's ‘stake’ or ‘investment’ in an illegal pursuit as is used in labelling theory (Lemert, 1951; Goffman, 1959; Becker, 1960). The term commitment as an investment comprehends a subjective, emotive dedication in the language of traditional criminology (Steffensmeier and Ulmer, 2005). However, commitment should be considered in relation to the Freudian cathexis or affective investment that indicates a process of emotional attachment to a person or object (Freud, 1989: 49). In psychoanalytical terms, affective investment explains what it is that Glynos (2011: 75) underpins in the logic of fantasy in which ‘the subject is libidinally invested in its narrative’ by becoming gripped by that very logic. In this regard, the crew mobilises its bodily-intensity and libidinal energy not only in the image of a notorious criminal, but also in the practices of burglary to support that image. Enjoyment ensuing from stealing these objects orients the crew towards further commitment. The enormous quantity of cash forms the basis of affective commitment (investment) in burglary.

We were very hungry on that day ‘coz we’d been outside for hours. Harry and Gorki [went] back home. Only me and Juba [were left]. That's it. We made our way to the semt market to pick up unsold fruit, then saw a doorkeeper family in our street leaving home. We ran after them and went around [to] the back garden. We jimmied the backdoor [open]. It was tightly locked but we managed to break in … I dashed into the kitchen to eat something, and Juba went into the bedroom. Juba just walked into the kitchen and then kicked the table. He shouted at me: ‘Don't eat this fuckin’ shit! I will get you a kebab in a restaurant!’ He showed me a bundle [of cash]. I was amazed by that stack of money. After that we left quickly. (Muzo)

The conversation with Maddy also bears out Muzo's remarks:

The money we were getting was very good!

Q: What did you get while hanging out with them?

Wowww, [stacks of] cash, [loads of] gold!

Q: Did it [valuables] come out of every apartment you guys broke into?

They got it out even if it didn't want to come out! [giggling]

The enjoyment experienced by the acquisition of ready money enlivens the fantasy of possessing consumer goods and cash, thereby becoming a reputable criminal due to the power gained from material rewards. The crew members began introducing themselves as The Crew, implying they thought of themselves as a mafia organisation. Muzo named the crew the Azros as a reference to his grandfather's alias in the village. Their ‘courage’ and ‘bravado’ then had to be complemented with a ‘cool’ appearance. Dressing like a proper gayrımeşhur was necessary, and with plenty of cash, this was easily achieved. After a couple of big scores, they went to the city centre to buy black suits. Muzo has never forgotten that Juba and he bought a pair of identical black suits, as it symbolised the style of a mafia boss. It was the first time Muzo had worn such a luxurious and stylish outfit in his entire life, so this was a source of pride for him. The crew preferred clothes and accessories in a style that resonated with what contemporary organised crime lords were believed to wear. A pair of black trousers, patent leather shoes and a dark suit perfectly encapsulated this image in the 1990s. All the crew members confirm that dressing like a gayrımeşhur significantly changed the way other people viewed them in the neighbourhood.

Money gained from burglaries fulfilled the partial enjoyment of being someone respectable but in an illegitimate setting. However illegal they knew it to be, the act of burglary was pulling them in so deep simply because it was instrumental in realising their fantasies. The crew's superficially prosperous circumstances began to draw the attention of their peers. Having been lured by the display of gayrımeşhur consumerism, Reddy joined the crew:

Q: Why did you leave the guys you were hanging out with before and join the Azros?

Muzo took me in. He said to me ‘come brother! We can find our way [in] [yolumuzu buluruz]! [There's] shit loads of money in this job.’ Now do you understand? I was also tempted … I said to myself ‘these [guys] are coming and going [like they own the place] because they have loads of money!’

Q: That's OK! But give me an example of what you saw.

It was [the] clothes, and sekil [street cool]. They were dressing up cool and driving cool cars. The crew was carrying stacks of money in [their] pockets.

Q: All of them?

Yes. They were yelling out Azros, Azros!

The affluent imagery and growing reputation of the crew became well known throughout the neighbourhood. Showing off their new-found wealth and affluent style, the crew drew attention, and respect, from all the youths in the neighbourhood. Affective investment in the mafioso image not only constructed a salient street-criminal identity for the crew but also forged their criminal habitus in such a way as to professionalise the modus operandi of burglary. The greater the financial returns, acts of burglary and prison experience, the more they forged their criminal habitus and capital, and the more they became involved within the discourse/practice of the illegitimate realm.

In the years spanning 1998–2003, the crew continued to commit burglaries relying on their early experiences and the formative bodily and mental acquisitions that they had achieved to realise material gains. Despite being engaged in burglary for a number of years, no crew member had ever been caught red-handed: the prison sentences served were as a result of evidence found against them, not because they were apprehended at the scene of the crime. This appears to support the notion of professionalism identified on the basis of serial crime commission and specialist skills embodied in the crew's criminal career.

Concluding remarks

This article sheds light on the process of how one can become a professional criminal by examining an early adolescent period of a group of offenders in the 1990s. Setting out Wacquant's methodical premise to investigate to what extent class dispositions and trained capacities fit in with each other, the research evidence has demonstrated that the primary habitus of familial lower-class, migrant doorkeeper cosmology provides a smooth transition to the secondary criminal habitus: a bodily-mental, informally-trained capacity. As an indirect consequence of this process, criminal dispositions of burglary evolved from spontaneous, game-like activities in the back gardens of apartment buildings, and became a continuous criminal performance. The criminal experiences of the crew reinforced key attributes, skills and dispositions employed during the break-ins. Their criminal habitus was built on a trial-and-error basis, gradually learning specialist break-in techniques. By these very acts, they also became accustomed to maintaining composure, having self-confidence and being resourceful while being ‘on the job’. Splitting habitus analytically into conative, cognitive and affective parts, the dispositional theory of action helped us in understanding the formative principles of individual criminogenic schemata in a non-Western context. Moreover, it also has proved to be very useful in charting out the bodily and mental capacity necessary for carrying out a criminal act like burglary.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting

Interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Boran Ali Mercan completed an MSc in Social and Political Theory at Birkbeck, University of London, then received PhD in Sociology from the University of Kent at Canterbury. He is Research Fellow in the Faculty of Political Science at Ankara University.

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