Having replaced the Victorian commitment to controlling impulses with the modern commitment to individual choice and self-expression, both liberal and conservative students of crime have tried to find better ways of manipulating the incentives facing persons who might choose crime. The chief difference of opinion among these thinkers is whether it is better to manipulate the costs of crime by emphasizing the deterrent or incapacitative effects of criminal sanctions or the benefits of a normative life by seeking better employment and income-maintenance opportunities. This current ascendancy of the rational-choice view of human nature, first sketched by Hobbes and elaborated by Bentham, is partly the result of the disappointment of those who sought dependable evidence that criminals could be rehabilitated by plan, in large numbers, and at reasonable cost. In the hands of reasonable, decent people, the unfettered devotion to self-expression and self-actualization can produce greatness and pioneering accomplishments, but in the hands of persons of weak character, a taste for risk, and an impatience for gratification, such an individualistic ethos can stimulate criminal behavior. Lacking the uniform system of moral values and informal social controls that apply it to character development, such an ethos of individualism must rely upon formal law to control deviancy and incentives that make obedience to law enticing. Five notes are provided.