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The Professional Thief
Abstract
This monograph by a professional thief with the aid of Edwin H. Sutherland's expert comments and analyses is a revealing sociological document that goes far to explain the genesis, development, and patterns of criminal behavior. Chic Conwell, as the author was known in the underworld, gives a candid and forthright account of the highly organized society in which the professional thief lives. He tells how he learned to steal, survive, succeed, and ultimately to pay his debt to society and prepare himself for full and useful citizenship. The Professional Thief presents in amazing detail the hard, cold facts about the private lives and professional habits of pickpockets, shoplifters, and conmen, and brings into focus the essential psychological and sociological situations that beget and support professional crime.
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Citations
Cited by
Making good: How ex-convicts reform and rebuild their lives.
Maruna, S. (2001) · doi:10.1037/10430-000 · Cited by 3,575
Informal Income Opportunities and Urban Employment in Ghana
Hart, K. (1973) · The Journal of Modern African Studies · doi:10.1017/s0022278x00008089 · Cited by 3,206
Piquero, A. R., Farrington, D. P., & Blumstein, A. (2003) · Crime and Justice · doi:10.1086/652234 · Cited by 914
Human ecology and crime: A routine activity approach
Felson, M., & Cohen, L. E. (1980) · Human Ecology · doi:10.1007/bf01561001 · Cited by 607
The Current State of Differential Association Theory
Matsueda, R. L. (1988) · Crime & Delinquency · doi:10.1177/0011128788034003005 · Cited by 293
Metadata
- Authors
- Sutherland, E. H.
- Venue
- Harvard Law Review
- Publisher
- JSTOR
- Published
- 1938-02
- Volume
- 51
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 772
- ISSN
- 0017-811X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1507571043
- Cited by
- 416
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 22.81
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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How to cite
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The Professional Thief. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.2307/1333907
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- Sutherland, E. H. (1938). The Professional Thief. Harvard Law Review. https://doi.org/10.2307/1333907
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
