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Abstract
By using US and Western databases, Hirschi and Gottfredson (HG) projected that the age distribution of crime always and everywhere has (a) a spiked adolescent peak and (b) a continuous decline thereafter into old age. In the study described here, we investigated these two core postulates of the age-crime invariance thesis by comparing age-crime distributions in South Korea (SK) with the inverted J-shaped norm proposed by HG. Our analysis considered age-crime schedules for a number of offense types (e.g. homicide) and indexes (e.g. total, violent, and property) and across a variety of measures or statistical tests. The findings revealed considerable divergence in South Korea’s age-crime patterns compared with the HG invariance norm. Instead, SK age-crime patterns parallel those for Taiwan (also a collectivist Asian country) as reported recently by Steffensmeier and colleagues (2017). Implications for research and theory on the age-crime relation more broadly are discussed.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Eunkyeong Jeong for assisting us in collecting age-crime data for South Korea. We also thank Soo-yong Byun for enabling contacts with South Korea social scientists and school officials, and we thank in particular the South Korean social scientists, police officials, and other knowledgeable sources for constructive feedback about South Korean culture and criminal justice practices.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Notes
1 HG also maintained that the age-crime relation cannot be explained by extant sociological variables or theories. Instead, they posited a direct age or maturation effect as accounting for the association.
2 The “indigenous experts” we consulted with about South Korea social and cultural practices included law enforcement, school officials, businessmen, university faculty, criminologists and sociologists. Most have lived, prior or currently, in the United States for extended periods of time. Of note: (a) there is a sizable South Korean community in the city where our university is located; (b) one of the co-authors of this study is a native of SK who served as a police officer in SK before receiving a doctorate in criminology at a major US university.
3 For parsimony we combine arrests for robbery with theft arrests because they have similar age distributions and often overlap in offense conduct. Robbery is defined loosely as force or threat of force, such as when youth intimidate a schoolmate to “give” pocket money or fail to repay money or property that was “requested” as a “loan” or “favor”.
4 There is a small (temporary) dip in crime in the late teens in South Korea that parallels the mandatory military requirement for all youth following high school graduation (either immediately or shortly after). This dip is followed soon by a rise in crime that lasts well into the thirties and beyond.
5 We discuss below the adolescent spike for theft in SK that differs from the bimodal or relatively flat distribution in Taiwan (not shown here). This difference notwithstanding, the age pattern for theft in both countries is relatively flat throughout the twenties and thirties, regardless of the peak age.
6 We also compared SK age-crime patterns to those in United States and found that SK distributions are typically much older than US age-crime distributions. Nonetheless, while most US age-crime curves display early peaks, they are less sharply skewed as compared to the HG invariance norm. Figures are available from authors upon request.
7 There apparently is some parallel between SK and United States in teen incentives (small financial gain, status with peers) and opportunities for low-yield theft (e.g. shoplifting; bike theft) that may help to account for the adolescent spike in theft SK as in United States (see reviews in Greenberg, Citation1994; Steffensmeier et al., Citation1989).
8 Our discussion here may also help to account for some differences between SK and Taiwan in the age-curve for theft—e.g. no clear-cut peak in Taiwan): less in way of age hierarchy and problem of teen bullying in Taiwan; greater overall affluence among teenagers, less in way of Westernized teen subculture and emergent presence of delinquent peer group in Taiwan; and effects of greater political, social, and economic stability in Taiwan on the smooth functioning of the family and other societal institutions.
9 Recidivism rate of youth arrestees is low in SK and seems due to restorative sanctioning accompanied by strong warnings from enforcement officials to first-time offenders and their parents of very tough sanctions “if it happens again” (Lee & Jo, Citation2011; Park & Choi, Citation2011).
10 Historically, it appears that arrests and convictions were extremely rare for domestic altercations because the victims (usually females and children) viewed the incidents as a private matter. They often did not report the violence to the police, or they subsequently dropped the charges. However, some increase in reporting has taken place in recent years as a result of legislation (enforced since 1998) which mandates the reporting of domestic violence and child abuse cases to official authorities and the application of legal measures.
11 A recent analysis of age-crime patterns in India, another collectivist-hierarchical nation in Asia, is noteworthy for also yielding older or spread-out distributions (Steffensmeier, Lu, & Kumar, Citation2019).
12 See Steffensmeier et al. (Citation2017) for a cautionary assessment of recent research and theory on the role of teen neural development as a main cause of an adolescent-spiked age-crime distribution (see Pfeifer & Allen, Citation2012). Among other caveats, there is a notable lack of research on hormonal or cerebral factors contributing to risky adolescent behavior involving non-Western samples or subjects.
13 Some scholars contend that, while HG’s historical and cultural coverage of the age-crime relation was sparse, the invariance thesis has since been abundantly confirmed across samples that vary in their national origin, historical era, cultural template etc. (Sweeten et al., Citation2013, pp. 378–379). This seems hardly the case. To our knowledge, very few if any studies have investigated the age-crime relation in contexts that differ from the United States or Western template of social and cultural properties.
14 Of note also: Age-crime patterns in the collectivist nation of India seem to diverge sharply from the invariance norm. Although limited to a few broad age groupings (e.g. 14–17, 18–29, 30–44, 45–59), age-arrest statistics in India display “older” age-crime distributions that parallel those in South Korea and Taiwan (Steffensmeier et al., Citation2019).
15 Cross-cultural psychology distinguishes between etic and emic approaches to studying culture—whether one is interested in etic aspects of culture and looks for a small set of universal dimensions on which cultures vary; as compared to being interested in the emic aspects of culture, seeking to flesh out various social practices, without necessarily constraining them to a set of universal dimensions. We argue for both approaches.
16 Along with our projections that stem from the collectivist-individualist conceptualization, an added set of expectations might involve the impact of economic development and modernization on the age-crime relation. A longstanding position within sociological criminology has been that economic development (and other modernizing transformations) is disruptive to societal institutions and social-cultural practices in ways that disproportionately elevate youth as compared to adult involvement in crime—e.g. by weakening family controls over youth; increasing individualism, etc. (Clinard and Abbott, Citation1973; Steffensmeier et al., Citation1989). Drawing from our theoretical treatment, we project—one, that undeveloped and/or developing nations will yield less adolescent-spiked age-crime distributions as compared to developed nations. Two, that the effects of development on age-crime patterns will be conditioned by the “stickiness” of culture in some nations (e.g. Taiwan).
17 In Chinese culture: The themes of warmth and restrictiveness in Chinese parenting practices begin in infancy and continue as the child grows when concerns about achievement, aggression, and sexuality come to the fore and are channeled with the same concerned strictness that marked the earlier years of the child. (Bond, Citation1991, pp. 18–19).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Darrell Steffensmeier
Darrell Steffensmeier is a professor of sociology and criminology at Pennsylvania State University. His current research targets (1) gender and race–ethnicity effects on criminal punishment and patterns of crime, (2) crime types and organization (including a “new” interest in white-collar and corporate crime), and (3) an international assessment of the relation between age and crime. His published work has appeared in Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, American Sociological Review, and Social Forces.
Yunmei Lu
Yunmei Lu is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology at University of South Florida and holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests include the age and crime relationship, the impact of demographic change on crime, sentencing, and cross-cultural studies. Her work has appeared in Criminology, Law and Human Behavior and Rural Sociology.
Chongmin Na
Chongmin Na is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the John Jay College, CUNY. His research interests include theoretical mediating mechanisms underlying the stability and change in offending and the process through which CJ policies/programs affect criminological outcomes. His work has appeared in Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, and Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency.