Criminal careers can be categorised as either general or specialised. A key challenge in studying crime specialisation is determining which crimes should be considered similar and which should be considered distinct from the criminal’s perspective. We conducted an empirical study involving a large group of Swedish suspects to address this issue. The primary objective was to investigate generalist and specialist behaviour in crime. By employing directed network analysis, our study aimed to uncover temporal patterns of criminal specialisation. Specifically, we examined the temporal connections between different types of crimes to reveal distinct patterns in criminal behaviour. The findings indicate that individuals who were suspected of at least two crime types within each of the five communities throughout their criminal careers demonstrated varying patterns of specialisation evolution. In contrast, some individuals consistently maintained high levels of generalism. These results highlight the diverse paths individuals take in their criminal behaviour and contribute to our understanding of the dynamics of criminal specialisation over time.