ABSTRACT
Concluding a book is a challenging task. It is tempting to be cautious and simply regurgitate what has gone before. Others may strike out boldly with new extravagant claims which attract attention. We aim to be cautiously bold! Our title ‘What's wrong with criminal careers?’ is perhaps suitably arresting. However, it tells only half the story. We need first to recognise what has been achieved in the two decades or so since criminal careers became a distinctive sub-discipline of criminology. The two volumes of Blumstein and his colleagues in 1986 is a good marker of this transition. Before that, of course, there had been some important work, particularly the pioneering efforts of Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck, which still has resonance. However, since the mid-1980s there has been a debate, both implicit and explicit, about how one can most appropriately study criminal careers.
