Criminal convictions among children and young adults
| Published date | 01 August 2008 |
| Author | Brian Francis,Elizabeth Ackerley,Keith Soothill |
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895808092431 |
| Date | 01 August 2008 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
297
Criminal convictions among children and
young adults:
Changes over time
KEITH SOOTHILL, ELIZABETH ACKERLEY AND
BRIAN FRANCIS
Lancaster University, UK
Abstract
This study focuses on court conviction rates—that is, the numbers
and proportion of the population in England and Wales who are
convicted of a crime between the ages of 10–25. Data on over
47,000 male and 10,000 female offenders for six specific birth
cohorts (those born in 1953, 1958, 1963, 1968, 1973 and 1978)
were extracted from the Offenders Index. We related convictions in
three age groups (10–15, 16–20, 21–25) to population estimates for
these age groups. Striking differences in the conviction rates over
time were observed for both males and females. There is a remarkable
decline among the 10–15 age group for more recent cohorts which
echoes the increasing use of court diversionary procedures in this
age group. There is no corresponding increase in conviction rates
for the later age groups. These figures suggest that efforts in the
1980s and early 1990s to divert offenders away from court
convictions have been successful, and that such diversionary
schemes need to be encouraged.
Key Words
cohort • crime participation • England and Wales • gender
• prevalence • young offenders
Criminology & Criminal Justice
© 2008 SAGE Publications
(Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore)
and the British Society of Criminology.
www.sagepublications.com
ISSN 1748–8958; Vol: 8(3): 297–315
DOI: 10.1177/1748895808092431
Introduction
The topic of this article—the changing patterns of convictions among chil-
dren and young adults—attracts much rhetoric in the media. Almost invari-
ably, the tone is one of declining moral standards reflected in increasing
crime rates. As Geoff Pearson (1983) vividly identifies in his classic text,
Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears, such doom-laden messages are
not new but remain persistent over time.1Less apparent in the public arena
is the sustained review of the evidence which may buttress (or not) the vari-
ous claims being made. But there is no doubt that crime rates are the fod-
der of criminology, which need to be explored.
Indeed, there is a substantial literature on crime rates, which examines
the number of reported crimes, or arrests, or crimes brought to justice, stand-
ardized by population, and how such figures are changing over time.
However, it is useful to disentangle crime rates into two parts—prevalence
rates (the proportion of the population who are involved in crime), and
incidence rates (the rate at which an individual commits crimes)
(Farrington, 1986). Other terminology is sometimes used; Piquero et al.
(2003) refer to crime participation rather than prevalence, and crime fre-
quency rather than incidence, but the concepts are the same. In contrast to
the focus on crime rates, temporal changes in prevalence rates have been
relatively neglected in criminology. Prevalence can be considered both from
the official point of view (whether an individual has had experience of court
proceedings, or has been arrested) or through self-report studies (whether
an individual has admitted to committing a crime).
When change has been considered, work on prevalence has primarily
focused on change in relation to age and gender. Farrington (1983), for
example, revealed that the age–prevalence curve closely follows the classic
age–crime curve, peaking at the same age. Similarly, using cumulative preva-
lence rates (that is, examining how many have committed a crime up to a
certain age), Piquero et al. (2003) report on 19 studies that have demon-
strated that these are higher for males than for females and that these rates
vary according to the cut-off age, the date and the location of the study.
Our focus in this article is on the prevalence of court convictions. For a
specific age group, court conviction rates, unlike crime rates, tend to be
regarded as rather static phenomena. Usually, derived from classic longitu-
dinal studies, we are told of rates at particular age points without reference
to the rates of other generations. So, for example, the Cambridge Study of
Delinquent Development notes that, of a cohort of males born in 1952–4
in the locality of south-east London, 33 per cent had obtained a criminal
conviction by the age of 25 (Farrington and Wikström, 1994) and 40 per
cent by age 40 (Farrington, 2001). These figures tend to be routinely quoted
by others without much consideration as to whether such proportions are
constant or not. Internationally, Carrington et al. (2005), in a meta-analysis
report on four additional studies (including their own), which follow up a
birth cohort and report court conviction prevalence rates reveal that none
Criminology & Criminal Justice 8(3)298
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