In Chapter 3 our focus was on those in our sample with fewer than three officially recorded arrests. As we noted earlier, however, the study of criminal careers has generally been more concerned with people who are regarded as more chronic or persistent offenders. It might be argued that only such criminals have made sufficient commitment to crime to make it possible to apply the concept of career as it is used in other areas of social life: something that has a beginning and, possibly, an ending and that involves development and identity. In this chapter we examine chronic offenders more closely. Can the concept of a criminal career be more usefully applied to such criminals in our sample? Are there also distinct types of offenders and distinct paths to crime in this category? We begin by describing the quantitative relationships between frequency of offending and measures of conventionality and deviance. We then turn to a qualitative analysis of the social and criminal careers of chronic offenders based on our readings of the presentence investigations.

Social Stability, Deviance, and Frequency of Offending

In the previous chapter we found that low-frequency offenders were much more likely than chronic criminals to evidence characteristics associated with social stability and achievement. They were, in turn, less likely to have indicators of deviance on their social records as reported in the PSIs. A similar, though somewhat more complex, relationship exists between the frequency of offending in our chronic offender sample and these measures.