A Life of Risk
Risk defined Sam Goodman's life—so much so he barely took notice of it. Longtime thief, fence, and semi-legitimate businessman, Sam died after a four-month bout with lung cancer. At his bedside was Darrell Steffensmeier, who was conducting his final interviews for a new book about the social organization of illegal enterprise, and the pathways into and out of crime. In other words, the book was about Sam.
“He knew he wasn't going to make it and we both knew it would be the last time we would talk,” recalls the Penn State professor of sociology and criminology. “I was really 
saddened by his death. He had a huge impact on my life.”
The two men met in the mid-1970s, when Steffensmeier was doing research on women entering the police force. In the course of his work, he began to talk to offenders who were part of the criminal underworld, which Steffensmeier defines broadly as “the culture, setting, or social organization associated with criminal activities and more general rule-violating behavior.” As he became more interested in how the underworld operated—its rules and code of behavior—he was repeatedly told to go see Sam.
“When I would interview an offender, I'd ask, ‘Who else should I talk to about the world of theft and trade in stolen goods?' I was always told, ‘Go see Sam; he knows his way around.'”
In 1986, Steffensmeier published The Fence: In the Shadow of Two Worlds, which combined Sam's narrative—in his own words—and a scholarly examination of criminal careers, illegal enterprise, the organization and structure of the underworld, and the moral and ethical strictures that its inhabitants live by. His latest book, Confessions of a Dying Thief, is the rest of Sam's story and ends with his death. In it, Sam reflects on his life, his attitudes towards his crimes, and he explains his own moral system.
Sam began his criminal career as a burglar in his mid-teens, and later became a fence, or someone who deals in stolen goods. Sam was imprisoned for a short time during the 1970s for receiving stolen property. That's when Steffensmeier met him and the two stayed in continuous contact until shortly before Sam died in the 1990s.
“After we built a trust between us, he was willing to let me into his world,” says Steffensmeier. “When he'd say, ‘I'm going out, you should come,' I'd ride in his van with him and we'd often go to auctions. I found out later, when Sam was dying, that sometimes it was legit; sometimes not. Now, looking back, it's a bit unnerving to wonder what he had in the back of that van.”
Sam ran a quasi-legitimate secondhand business and was, according to Steffensmeier, affable, charming, and extremely generous with his employees. He also held a much more nuanced view of right and wrong and felt that the lines between the underworld and the upper world were often blurred, not just for him but for many people. According to Steffensmeier, he would rail against tobacco companies, for example, asking if what he'd done was worse than addicting people to nicotine.
“Sam recognized that criminals have a certain marginality from mainstream society and, like the rest of us, felt the powerful pressures for conformity that all of us experience,” Steffensmeier says. “But he would point to others who, in his opinion, did far worse.”
Sam also had strong feelings about his own identity.
“Sam didn't mind if people saw him as a crook,” says Steffensmeier. “But he would mind if they saw him as a ‘bum.' He wanted people to see him as ‘his own person,' a businessman, taking care of business in his shop.”
Steffensmeier also examines the notions of manliness in this culture that treads between legal and illegal activities. Those raised in the working-class culture, he points out, are often extremely independent and people like Sam are not pariahs by any means. He puts Sam's criminal activities into context, examining the attitudes of many people who were raised in blue-collar families where “you do what you have to do get by.”
“Types like Sam, who are good at conning and hustling in the face of the authorities, embody the ‘underdog' concept, which is worth admiration to many” explains Steffensmeier. “Sam bucks the system, as opposed to rich people who receive preferential treatment or can buy their way out of trouble with the law.”
And regardless of what Sam did, Steffensmeier grew fond of him.
“He was a complex character,” says Steffensmeier. “Although he was a property criminal most of his life, he gave good deals on merchandise to those short on cash, paid his employees well, and you could trust him to watch your children. He was a big part of my life and my career. I miss him.”