2: STATE

wrong motivations, wrong “skills, habits, identities, worldviews,

preferences, . . . values” [England 2016: 4]) that cause crime (crimi-
nal behaviour). There should be something very familiar about this
scheme, since it is surely the generalized, theoretical rendition of the
reasoning employed every day by members of society going about
their daily affairs (Douglas 1967; Atkinson 1978). The difference is
that in the attitude of everyday life, such reasoning is attentive to the
practical circumstances in which it is being done.
That is, practical reasoning is attentive to what Garfinkel calls the
“this’s.” He explicates this idea in the course of describing how SPC
inquiries into equivocal deaths use each particular death “as a prec-
edent with which various ways of living in society that could have
terminated with that death are searched out and read ‘in the remains’”
(Garfinkel 1967: 17). The coroner and SPC employees engaged in
such inquiries must make their determinations

with respect to the “this’s”: they have to start with this much; this
sight; this note; this collection of whatever is at hand. And whatever
is there is good enough in the sense that whatever is there not only
will do, but does . . . What the inquiry can come to is what the
death came to.
(Garfinkel 1967: 18, emphasis in original)

While fully engaged with using the formula highlighted in capitals

above, their focus is on explaining particular cases, not generalized
phenomena. Moreover, their findings are made with respect to the
organizational contingencies already referred to in the previous sec-
tion.The search for explanation is embedded in practical tasks, serves
practical ends and respects practical circumstances.
There is also a deeper point at issue here.With a few minor excep-
tions, in order to determine that a given act is a crime, it must be
shown that the actor intended to commit the act or knew that com-
mitting it was wrong. Mens rea must accompany the actus reus.Without
demonstrated intent to kill, an act of homicide may be found to have
been accidentally caused and therefore not be a case of murder. But
determining intent involves inspecting the social circumstances of the
action. Thus, to adopt the general form of theorizing in correctional
criminology (above), the bad thing in society (say, a bad marriage)
may explain the bad thing in the actor (hatred of their spouse) that

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