Explaining the Facts of Crime: How the Developmental Taxonomy Replies to Farrington’s Invitation

The relationship between age and crime has been one of the most well-documented (Quetelet, 1831; Hirschi and Gottfredson, 1983) and contentious (Steffensmeier et al., 1989; Britt, 1992) of all criminological facts. Researchers studying the relationship between age and crime have typically observed that the aggregate pattern is such that criminal activity tends to peak in the late teens through the mid-twenties, and then declines throughout adulthood.