Popular
When authorities forbid a popular book, readers don't stop reading it; they read it in secret, in fear of being caught. Those in power may also punish the author for what the book reveals, for example about how prisons treat inmates.
For a young criminal, the big city is a place of opportunity. It offers a network of fellow criminals who keep pulling him into new jobs, and a crowd of ordinary citizens he can make afraid. Crime in the city runs on connections as much as on individual choice.
One reading of the postcolonial city is that the legacy of colonial rule pushes young people into crime. On this view, urban crime is an inherited condition, not only a matter of individual failings.
A criminal can stay silent about a job and still find that word spreads, until he is among the most wanted. Reputation in the underworld builds on its own, and it makes him a target.
Learning that most of your old companions in crime are dead or in prison can make you resolve to quit, but the resolve may not last. Fear of consequences alone gives way once old contacts pull you back into one more job.