Transcript Age and Crime - Southeast Missouri State University

Age and Crime
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Age
• Across cultures and history, crime is a
youthful behavior
• All three measures of crime in the U.S.
support this
• Age is inversely related to crime,
regardless of social class, marital
status, race or gender
• Young are arrested disproportionately
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Age (continued)
• Rate has remained the same for at
least 40 years
• 15-18 year olds account for 6% of the
total population, but account for 25% of
index crimes and 15% of all offenses
• Crime is most common in the teens and
twenties and then declines
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Age (continued)
• People 45 and older account for 30% of
the population, but 6% of index crimes.
Over 65 account for 12% of the
population but < 1% of index crimes
• Subtypes
• 1. early onset, career criminals, high
rate of offending which persists
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Subtypes
• 2. High risk, low-profit crimes tend to
decline with age
• 3. Low risk, high profit crimes do not
decline with age, and may increase
(embezzlement, fraud, drug dealing)
• 4. For most of the population, crime
decreases with age: desistance
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Explanations
• More adventurous
• In modern society, more likely to be
unemployed, more idle time
• Cognitive changes occur in late teens,
such as the abiity to develop a longterm view of life, resist need for
immediate gratification
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Explanations
• Function of the natural history of human
life cycle,
• establishing independence from
parents,
• bonding with peers.
• With age, person has family and work,
and becomes part of the adult world,
which does not encourage crime
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Explanations
• Young are less skilled in crime and thus
more likely to get caught
• Biological: as people age, the lost
strength and energy, begin to “low
down” and must compete with younger
criminals.
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Developmental Criminology
• History of a criminal career
• Study of activation, maintenance,
escalation, and desistance of criminal
activity
• Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck
• Wolfgang’s study of 10,000 boys born in
Philadelphia in 1945
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Wolfgang’s study
• By age 18, 1/3 had an arrest
• 46% never rearrested
• 6% had 4 or more arrests, accounted
for 70-80% of all serious crimes
committed by the entire group
• Cohort then followed to age 30
• Subjects with no juvenile record had an
18% chance of arrest as an adult
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Wolfgang (continued)
• Persistent (chronic) offenders
• 80% chance of becoming an adult
offender
• 50% chance of being arrested 4 or
more times as an adult, accounted for
80% of all serious crimes
• Problems in learning and motor skills
and family relations early on
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Other findings
• Youthful offenders 4 times more likely to
continue offending as adults
• More likely to:
• abuse alcohol and drugs,
• be economically dependent,
• to have weak employment records
• marital difficulties
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Other findings
• Second cohort studies (1958)
• Replicated 1st study, overall crime rate
was higher
• England and Sweden have such
studies with similar results
• Punishment inversely related to chronic
offending: the stricter, themore likely
repeated criminal behavior
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