A formal decomposition of declining youth crime in Denmark

Participation and Frequency in Criminal Convictions across 25 Successive Birth Cohorts: Collectivity, Polarization, or Convergence?

“…With respect to the age-crime relationship, Matthews and Minton (2018) recently argued that the task has shifted from that of explaining an increasingly peaked age-crime curve to instead having to explain a curve that has become increasingly flat (p. 314; see also Ulmer & Steffensmeier, 2014). While the crime drop generally appears to have involved a decline in male youth crime (Andersen et al, 2016;Berg et al, 2016;Matthews & Minton, 2018), our results are only partly consistent with the notion of a flatter age-crime curve. The male participation curves display decreases across almost the entire age range across successive cohorts, but a disproportionately large decrease during late adolescence, which is indeed supportive of a flattening tendency.…”

“…The second period, however, complicates general explanations for the crime drop. Instead, our results resonate well with those of Andersen et al (2016) in indicating that "broad explanations of general changes in the crime rate might not sufficiently address the nature of the current trends in youth crime" (p. 1312). Referring to the influential security hypothesis, Andersen et al note that if increasing security would be a sufficient explanation it would affect both first time offenses and recidivism, when, on the contrary, the results suggest that "the consequence of committing a first crime are unaltered and start the offender on a negative spiral with the same slope" (p. 1312).…”

“…In another study, Matthews (2016) used a different approach, essentially standardization and decomposition of conviction data, to dissect the aggregate crime trend in Scotland into its participation and frequency components, while accounting for the age structure among both males and females. In line with Andersen et al (2016), the results showed that participation was the driving force behind the decline among males, and that frequency generally played little role. Matthews (2016) also found gender differences, in particular noting that the age structure appeared to be the most important influence on changing conviction rates among females, which led him to suggest that both gender and a broader age range spanning more than only a few years should be used in order to more fully understand how participation and frequency have changed over the course of the crime drop.…”

“…In a Danish study, Andersen et al (2016) used administrative data on criminal charges and found that the offending population had consistently decreased in size across successive birth cohorts, but that the rate of offending frequency over these same cohorts had remained virtually the same. In another study, Matthews (2016) used a different approach, essentially standardization and decomposition of conviction data, to dissect the aggregate crime trend in Scotland into its participation and frequency components, while accounting for the age structure among both males and females.…”

“…Today, criminologists debate how to understand the fall in crime rates seen in many Western societies during recent decades (Aebi & Linde, 2012;Farrell, Tilley, & Tseloni, 2014;Tonry, 2014). In this context, a small field of research has utilized the criminal career approach to explore whether or not falling crime rates can be linked to any divergence in trends in participation and frequency across successive birth cohorts (Andersen, Anker, & Andersen, 2016;Berg, Baumer, Rosenfeld, & Loeber, 2016;Matthews, 2016;von Hofer, 2014, see also Baumer, V elez, & Rosenfeld, 2018). The general conclusion, so far, appears to be that the crime drop is driven by a decline in participation in crime, first and foremost among young males.…”