pp. 693-718

Past attempts to solve the social class and crime puzzle (why is there no strong effects ?) have tried to redefine the independent variable (social class), the dependant variable (crime) or tried to uncover alternative causal paths. The results were generally disappointing. In this paper, we offer yet another attempt to address the puzzle. We argue that individual patterns in criminal achievement are directly and indirectly shaped by social class of origin of offenders. We test this argument by analyzing a self-report survey on the criminal activities of a random sample of 195 federal inmates during the three years prior to their current incarceration.