The Age and Crime Distribution and its Explanation

Abstract

Abstract The age–crime curve has fuelled the criminological imagination for some time, and yet there remains no agreed upon explanation for the relationship between age and crime. SAT argues that changes in people’s crime propensities and criminogenic exposure explain changes in their crime involvement; hence aggregate changes in crime propensities and criminogenic exposure would be expected to predict aggregate changes in crime involvement—i.e. the age–crime curve. Consequently, this chapter specifically examines if age-related changes in crime propensity and criminogenic exposure mirror age-related changes in crime, and the extent to which the link between age and crime propensities and criminogenic exposure accounts for the link between age and crime. To this end, the chapter critiques current approaches to explaining the age–crime curve and present several different analyses examining the extent to which patterns of development in participants’ crime propensities and criminogenic exposure align with their criminal careers, for all participants and by crime trajectory group. It finds support for SAT’s assertion that participants’ crime propensities and criminogenic exposure can explain much of the relationship between their age and their crime involvement.