This study is an examination of persistent offending and its implications for the understanding and investigation of desistance and career length. Persistence, especially as it is operationalized using official measures, is characterized as fundamentally a measure of resistance to formal social control: continued crime in the face of increasingly severe sanctions. This conceptualization is used to explain findings from a longitudinal analysis of arrests for individuals released from California Youth Authority (CYA) institutions. Findings indicate long and extensive careers and characteristic declines with age but also considerable variation. This variation, which can be explained by resistance to formal social control, complicates the study of career length. Finally, results indicate a strong crime reduction effect of criminal justice interventions, both for the CYA and for later prison terms, if any. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding and studying career length among serious, persistent offenders. (Contains 1 table and 8 figures.)