Some Critical Observations on Criminal Types and Criminal Careers

This article deals with offender typologies, which have been of interest to several generations of criminologists. A number of these efforts are reviewed, but major emphasis is placed on the author's “role-career” scheme. A variety of research findings produced in the past decade or so suggest that the typological approach has been relatively unfruitful. In general, “careers” in crime and deviance are encountered less frequently than is suggested by typologies.