Explain what the research tells us about the relationship between aging out and delinquency. What are your views on age and delinquency?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

• It is generally accepted that age is inversely related to criminality: Deviance in adolescence is fueled by the need for money and sex and reinforced by a teen culture whose informal rules stress defying conventional morality.
• At the same time, teenagers are becoming independent from parents and other adults who enforce conventional standards of morality and behavior.
• Regardless of race, sex, social class, intelligence, or any other social variable, people commit less crime as they age – this is referred to as the aging-out process, sometimes called desistance from crime or spontaneous remission
• Aging out of crime may be a function of the natural history of the human life cycle and no one is immune.
• Even the most chronic juvenile offenders commit less crime as they age.
• Though high rate offenders will commit more crime as adults than their non-delinquent peers, even these committed and persistent delinquents will slow down as they age; few people get into as much trouble when they are 51 as they did when they were 15.
• Student views will vary.