ABSTRACT
Although this work is about crime, criminals, and social scientists, this is incidental rather than central to the argument. The main concern is to demonstrate the consequences in society and for sociologists of operating with a stereotype of the criminal rather than with a definition derived from an objective appraisal of the attributes of the variable with which the study is concerned. Such a definition must be an operational definition, that is, one that directs the investigator in his identification of his data.
