How Universal is the Youth Crime Drop? Disentangling Recent Trends in Youth Offending through a Socio-Economic Lens

ABSTRACT

Recent research has consistently found declines in youth offending, and it has been suggested that youth offending may have become more concentrated in lower socio-economic communities. However, there has been limited empirical examination of this proposition. This study aimed to examine changes in the relative concentration of youth offending in low and high socio-economic communities in an Australian jurisdiction, from 2008 to 2018, and to explore socio-economic drivers of different types of youth offending over this period. Changes in offending concentration were measured using ratios of youth offending rates in low and high socio-economic communities over time and Poisson panel regression was used to explore socio-economic drivers of youth offending rates. Findings indicated disparate patterns across youth offending types, with significant decreases in one-off and low to moderate offending, and significant increases in chronic offending over the same period. Overall, youth offending was not found to have become increasingly concentrated in lower socio-economic communities, primarily due to larger relative increases in chronic offending in higher socio-economic communities. Despite a slight decrease in concentration, lower socio-economic communities continue to experience markedly higher youth offending rates. Findings indicate a need to better understand drivers of recent increases in chronic youth offending.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth offending
• chronic offenders
• socio-economic disadvantage
• property crime
• violent crime

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges use of the services and facilities of the Griffith Criminology Institute’s Social Analytics Lab at Griffith University. I would also to thank Professor Janet Ransley, Dr Troy Allard and Professor Ross Homel for their comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Note: 17-year-olds were not considered youth offenders during most of the reference period in Queensland, though this was changed through legislation passed in 2018. However, 10 to 17 years represent a more common contemporary definition of juvenile offenders, and so this was deemed appropriate age range to use for examination of youth offending trends.