Age and Criminal Activity Lecture 6 – Troubles of Youth

Lecture Outline Importance of Childhood Age-Crime Curve Perceptions and Realities Age-Crime Curve Underlying Distributions Perspectives on the Process of Aging Trajectories or Pathways? Persistent Heterogeneity State Dependency The Study of Criminal Careers Onset, Duration and Desistance

Importance of Childhood Upbringing, early childhood and even pre-natal factors seen by many as either A key factor in determining personality A signal of underlying deviant personality (see Farrington, Moffitt) Others (see Furedi) argue that “parental determinism” is overstated, and used to justify a interventionist and judgmental attitude to the family -> “Paranoid Parenting”

Young men offend at higher rates than young women Evidence, though, that gender differential narrowing “Peak age of offending” lower for women

Hirschi and Gottfredson Central thesis “invariant” age distribution of crime across types of crime across social settings Current criminological theory cannot explain onset and desistance Age needs to be recognised, but other criminological causal theories do not need to be ‘thrown out’

Problems with existing theories Physical maturation? - the peak age of offending precedes full physical maturation Social Bonding: the age at which deviant groupings are at the strongest, coincides with the decline in offending How is it that social bonding becomes strengthened? Why is the ‘desistance curve’ smooth, and the effects the same between 19-24 as, say 29-34?

Investigating the Age- Crime Curve: Two (or more?) distinct groups? Adolescent Limited Offenders Lifetime Persistent Offenders

Trajectories v. Pathways the level of criminal propensity is determined early in life: persistent heterogeneity Research Aim: identify risk factors that predict criminal propensity Policy aim: inhibiting the development of criminal potential in early stages of individuals’ lives Pathways criminal behaviour is the result of decisions and turning points throughout life: state dependency Research Aim: identify how ‘events’ in people’s lives can change chances of offending Policy Aim: crime reduction effort targeted throughout life course

Key Considerations A need to address how offending ‘careers’ progress Onset of offending Duration of offending Desistance of offending

Considerations Teenage offending: increased numbers of offenders, or increased rates of offending? Changing characteristics of offending across age groups? Types and range of crime committed? Correlation between offending at different ages? Why? How do these considerations affect policy and practice?