Age–crime relation in India: similarity or divergence vs. Hirschi/Gottfredson inverted j-shaped projection?

In this study, we used age–crime statistics from India to investigate the two core tenets of Hirschi and Gottfredson’s (HG) invariance thesis that the age distribution of crime is always and everywhere adolescent spiked and thereafter declines continuously into elder ages. Besides comparisons to the...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Steffensmeier, Darrell J. (Author)
Contributors: Lu, Yunmei ; Kumar, Sumit
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Published: 2019
In: The British journal of criminology
Year: 2019, Volume: 59, Issue: 1, Pages: 144-165
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
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Keywords:
Age–crime
Cross-national
Culture
Gottfredson, Michael R.
Hirschi, Travis
Indien
Life course/developmental
Youth crime
Description
Summary:In this study, we used age–crime statistics from India to investigate the two core tenets of Hirschi and Gottfredson’s (HG) invariance thesis that the age distribution of crime is always and everywhere adolescent spiked and thereafter declines continuously into elder ages. Besides comparisons to the inverted J-shaped distribution projected by HG, we further compared Indian age–crime patterns with those in United States (Western nation; main evidential source for HG invariance projection) and Taiwan (like India, a non-Western collectivist society). Findings suggest considerable divergence in India’s age–crime patterns compared with HG invariance norm and US age–crime distributions, but overall similarity with Taiwan’s age–crime schedules. Implications for research and theory on the age–crime relation more broadly are discussed.
ISSN:1464-3529
DOI:10.1093/bjc/azy011