Age-Crime Curve Modeling

Age-crime curve modeling fits statistical functions to the well-known relationship between age and offending: crime rises sharply in adolescence, peaks in the late teens or early twenties, and declines through adulthood. Brought to prominence by Hirschi and Gottfredson's 1983 claim that this curve is invariant, and elaborated by Farrington, the modeling task is to capture its characteristic skewed, single-peaked shape and to debate what it implies about the causes of crime.