Abstract
One of the few facts agreed on in criminology is the age distribution of crime. This fact has been used to criticize social theories of crime causation, to provide the foundation for other theories, to justify recent emphases on career criminals, and to support claims of superiority for longitudinal designs in criminological research. In the present paper, we argue that the age distribution of crime is sufficiently invariant over a broad range of social conditions that these uses of the age distribution are not justified by available evidence.
Keywords
CausationCriminologyDistribution (mathematics)Foundation (evidence)SociologyPsychologyPolitical scienceLawMathematics
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Publication Info
- Year
- 1983
- Type
- article
- Volume
- 89
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 552-584
- Citations
- 1983
- Access
- Closed
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1983
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Cite This
Travis Hirschi,
Michael R. Gottfredson
(1983).
Age and the Explanation of Crime.
American Journal of Sociology
, 89
(3)
, 552-584.
https://doi.org/10.1086/227905
Identifiers
- DOI
- 10.1086/227905