Explaining the crime drop: contributions to declining crime rates from youth cohorts since 2005

Abstract

Since the mid-90s there has been almost a 50% reduction in the volume of crime in England and Wales -a trend that has been mirrored in many Western countries (Greenberg Justice Quarterly, 31(1), 2014). Despite previous assumptions, for example, declining birth cohorts, it is proposed here that the decline in crime for the 1995-2005 period can largely be attributed to a doubling of the probability of a crime being 'proven' (cf Lloyd et al. 1994; MOJ, 2012;Taylor 2016). However, in the last decade these reductions in crime rates have levelled off to a relatively stable degree. Analysis of published data relating to the performance of the criminal justice system in England and Wales suggests that reductions in crime levels since 2005 are largely accounted for by the fall in proportion of the youth population engaging in offending behaviour. It is argued that falls in rates of crime are largely independent of the offending frequency of young people or variations in the probability of offences being proven; rather, reductions in youth crime over this period could largely be attributed to policy changes, including multiagency interventions targeted at young people who were at risk of starting to offend (McAra and McVie 2015;Smith 2015). Further discussion suggests that the binary proven reoffending rate is not an accurate barometer of criminal justice system performance; rather it is argued that reductions in the youth offending population feed forward into later reductions in the number of adult offenders and further impact on overall crime rates in the longer term.Crime, Law and Social Change (2020) 73:25-53 https://doi.

Nuorisorikollisuuden esiintyvyys ja tekomäärät Suomessa 1995-2020

“…Nuorten omaisuusrikosten lasku on ollut varsin systemaattista 1990-luvun puolivälistä asti, kun taas väkivaltarikosten osalta määrä on lähtenyt laskuun 2010-luvulle tultaessa (Näsi & Tanskanen, 2017). Suomessa havaittu nuorisorikollisuuden kehitys onkin ollut samansuuntaista kuin muissa pohjoismaissa (Kivivuori & Bernburg, 2011) ja laajemmin kansainvälisesti (Fernández-Molina & Bartolomé Gutiérrez, 2020; van der Laan ym., 2021; Griffiths & Norris, 2020;McCarthy, 2020), mikä tukee kuvaa laaja-alaisesta kehityskulusta.…”

Crime drop in Ghana? Some insights from crime patterns and trends

“…Braga and Weisburd (2020) also found support for the hypothesis that Place-based POP strategies reduced crime. Furthermore, a growing body of empirical studies has emerged concerning the role of period and cohort effects in the decline of crime (Dixon and Farrell 2020;Griffiths and Norris 2020;Kim et al 2016;Lu and Luo 2020;O'Brien 2019;O'Brien and Stockard 2009). For example, Kim et al (2016) found that cohort effects rather than period effects seemed to be a more important predictor in the decline of age-specific felony arrest rates in New York State.…”

Like mother, like child? Sex differences in the maternal transmission of offending among a Scottish cohort of pre-adolescent children

“…Moreover, there is good evidence from other fields of research that having a more pluralistic approach to understanding the nature of intergenerational transmission is of theoretical benefit. Added to which, recent major reductions in youth offending (Griffiths and Norris, 2020) may well have created a transformation in the patterns, nature and timing of offending between recent generations, which may lessen the value of a strict homotypic approach.…”