In the last episode of the third part of Money Heist (Netflix, 2019), Inspector Alicia Sierra brings a boy to the windows of the Bank of Spain. He is Axel, the son of Nairobi, one of the robbers holed up inside. Nairobi goes to the glass to see him, and a police sniper, on Sierra’s order, shoots her. In the same final stretch, Sierra makes the Professor believe that Lisbon, his partner, has been executed, when in fact she is in custody. The robbers had stormed the bank to avenge the arrest of Río, one of their own, and Sierra, played by Najwa Nimri, is the one leading the police response: a brilliant, ironic and ruthless negotiator, several months pregnant and the widow of a colleague. She is also responsible for the interrogations Río underwent in a secret location, sleep deprivation and constant noise, a torture the state denies having practiced. When the Professor releases the evidence of the torture, the government washes its hands of her and removes her. Now a fugitive, she finds the Professor’s hideout, gives birth there and ends up allying with the gang. A police officer who does all this convinced she is on the right side is the case neutralization techniques describe.
// The theoryJustifying before breaking
In “Techniques of Neutralization” (1957), Gresham Sykes and David Matza rebutted the idea that offenders reject society’s values. On the contrary: they share them, and that is why they need to neutralize them before acting. They described five techniques: denial of responsibility (“I had no choice”), denial of injury (“nobody gets hurt”), denial of the victim (“he deserved it”), condemnation of the condemners (“those who judge me are worse”) and appeal to higher loyalties (“I did it for something more important”). Thanks to them, a person can break the norm without feeling like a criminal.
The law that breaks the law
Alicia Sierra is a catalogue of neutralization techniques. She denies the victim: Río is a terrorist, not a person with rights. She appeals to higher loyalties: the hostages’ lives and state security justify any means. She condemns the condemners: the robbers are the real criminals. And she denies her responsibility: she is only carrying out her superiors’ orders. What is interesting is that Sierra is not an ordinary offender but an agent of the law. Neutralisation lets her torture without ceasing to see herself as a good police officer, which is just what Sykes and Matza described.
// The subjectIrony and sweets
Sierra is one of the series’ most striking characters: sarcastic, capricious, always with a sweet in her mouth and ready to provoke everyone, including her bosses. Her pregnancy, which the series makes part of her presence, reinforces the contrast between her appearance and her cruelty. When the system abandons her, the series humanizes her: it shows her alone, hunted and a mother. That evolution towards alliance with the gang is also a comment on institutions: they used her for the dirty work and disowned her as soon as she became a problem.
The window scene sums up her method. Using a child as bait to bring down his mother would be, in any other context, what a police officer is there to prevent. Sierra presents it as the logical price of rescuing the hostages, and she does the same with Lisbon’s false execution: a lie aimed at breaking the Professor, justified because the other side lies too. Each move comes with its excuse, and the excuses add up until there is nothing she would not do.
Alicia Sierra
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// The crackNeutralisation is the symptom, not the cause
Sykes and Matza’s theory has been criticized on a question of order: it is not clear whether the justifications are built before the crime, as they argued, or afterwards, to ease the conscience. Sierra seems to justify herself before and after, and the series does not let us know whether the justifications push her or merely accompany her.
Moreover, in her case neutralization is not merely individual: Río’s torture was commissioned by the state, which then denied it existed. Explaining it only through one inspector’s justifications forgets the structure that ordered and protected it, which is what the criminology of state crime studies.
The absolute prohibition
The UN Convention against Torture (1984), which Spain ratified, establishes that no exceptional circumstance, whether war, threat of war or public emergency, may be invoked to justify it. It is one of the few absolute prohibitions in international law, and it exists to close the door on techniques of neutralization: no higher loyalty permits it. The Committee against Torture and the Spanish Ombudsman monitor compliance in Spain.
Three key ideas
- Sykes and Matza’s techniques of neutralization (1957) are justifications that allow a norm to be broken without feeling like an offender: denying injury, victim or responsibility, condemning the condemners or appealing to higher loyalties.
- Alicia Sierra tortures Río and uses Nairobi’s son as bait, convinced she is saving lives, until the state disowns her.
- The crack: it is unclear whether justifications cause the crime or accompany it, and Río’s torture was an institutional commission, not just an individual one.
Sources · further reading
- Sykes, G. M. and Matza, D. (1957). “Techniques of Neutralization: A Theory of Delinquency”. American Sociological Review, 22(6), 664-670.
- Maruna, S. and Copes, H. (2005). “What Have We Learned from Five Decades of Neutralization Research?”. Crime and Justice, 32, 221-320.
- Huggins, M. K., Haritos-Fatouros, M. and Zimbardo, P. G. (2002). Violence Workers: Police Torturers and Murderers Reconstruct Brazilian Atrocities. University of California Press.
- United Nations (1984). Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is Alicia Sierra?
Alicia Sierra is a villain from Money Heist, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. Sucking on a sweet, she calmly explained why torture was the most humane option.
Why does Alicia Sierra become a villain?
Neutralization techniques explain how people who believe in a rule manage to break it. Alicia Sierra uses every one of them to torture, lie and set traps while still feeling like a good cop.
Which criminological theory explains Alicia Sierra?
Alicia Sierra's case is analysed through Neutralization. Gresham Sykes and David Matza’s techniques of neutralization (1957) are the reasoning with which a person who shares conventional norms justifies breaking them in advance: denying responsibility, denying injury, denying the victim, condemning the condemners and appealing to higher loyalties. Alicia Sierra, of Money Heist (Netflix, parts 3-5), is the inspector who leads the police response to the assault on the Bank of Spain. To obtain information, she has Río tortured in a secret location; she then uses Nairobi’s son to lure her to a window, where a sniper wounds her. When her methods come to light, she is removed and hunted.
