ABSTRACT
The concept of "career criminals" may be emerging as one of the more useful paradigms that crime research has produced. The intractable repeat offender is a type that has always posed the most difficult challenges in the criminal justice system, but until the past decade there have been few systematic attempts to study individual criminal careers or to define the salient characteristics and behavior patterns of inveterate malefactors. The United States has got a special problem with crime, as speakers reiterated at a 2-dav conference on the report held at the National Academy of Sciences. Young urban males are the chief offenders, particularly young black urban males, who commit violent crimes five times as frequently as whites. Drug abuse continues to be underreported and its link with crime underestimated. About 65% of a group of felons tested in New York City and Washington were found to be on drugs. Research rarely has a direct beneficial effect on the crime rate.
