On his death in 2023, an obituary in the Washington Post noted that he "drew national attention by challenging prevailing views of criminal behavior, arguing that its causes lie not in environmental factors such as poverty but rather in an identifiable 'criminal personality'".
Samenow, interviewed by The Forensic Examiner in 2005, described it as "the longest in-depth research-treatment study of offenders that has been conducted in North America", lasting a total of 17 years.
Keller, US Parole Commissioner for the Southeastern United States, writing in 1980, argued that the work was "sensational", "simplistic", and had "done real harm to corrections".
[5] From 1978, Samenow was in private practice as a clinical psychologist in Alexandria, Virginia,[2] and "specialized in forensic psychology, notably criminal and child custody matters".
[6] His central thesis, that criminals commit crimes through their own free will,[7] because they have different thought patterns,[8] was refined in four more books published over the following three decades.