From “habitual offenders” to “career criminals”

Mainstream positivistic criminology has recently been challenged by a sociological perspective which views crime as a social construction and attempts to account for the collective definition of categories of crime and deviance. The purpose of this paper is to present a sociohistorical analysis and interpretation of the construction of two specific and related criminal categories: “habitual offender” and “carreer criminal.” The analysis focuses on the broad historical development of these two categories and the symbolic functions they serve. The data show that similar social conditions in two different time periods led to the development of two similar legal categories. Furthermore, both categories are judged to have served important and similar symbolic and ideological functions.