ABSTRACT
The concept criminal career figures prominently both in textbook analyses of crime and in public-policy debates over what can and should be done about it. The notion that offenders have "careers" in crime is beguiling but potentially misleading. Borrowed from both the world and the analysis of work and occupations, the career concept is an analytic tool. The career concept also suggests a great deal more planning, intentional choice, and persistence than most street-level thieves ever muster. One of the keys to understanding criminal-career variation lies in identifying significant career contingencies. The search for contingencies requires no assumptions about the empirical nature or duration of criminal careers, only that some conditions cause a turning away from crime while others cause the opposite. Desistance is the voluntary termination of serious criminal participation. In short, successful establishment of bonds with conventional others and participation in conventional activities are major contingencies on the path that leads to termination of a criminal career.
