Juvenile crime drop: What is happening with youth in Spain and why?
| Published date | 01 May 2020 |
| Date | 01 May 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1477370818792383 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370818792383
European Journal of Criminology
2020, Vol. 17(3) 306 –331
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370818792383
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Juvenile crime drop: What is
happening with youth in Spain
and why?
Esther Fernández-Molina and
Raquel Bartolomé Gutiérrez
University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain
Abstract
One of the most robust findings in criminology is the fall in crime rates throughout the Western
world. However, there is still much to be learnt about this and its causes. This case study analyses
the Spanish juvenile crime trends and tests the explanatory capacity of the sociodemographic
hypotheses. We use aggregate data provided by the police and self-report data. Our analysis
could be of interest in a worldwide debate on the crime drop. Demographic changes and the
economic situation have little relevance in explaining the changes. However, public policies seem
to have had a greater impact on crime trends. Furthermore, gender equality can be considered a
possible explanatory factor.
Keywords
Crime drop, crime trends, juvenile delinquency, self-reported juvenile delinquency
The crime drop
One of the clearest scientific trends in the world of criminology is that crime is declining
throughout the Western world, especially homicide and property crime. Hence, this
‘crime drop’ has become one of the most important criminological phenomena of mod-
ern times (Farrell et al., 2014).
The United States was the first country to detect this drop. After a progressive increase
in crime rates, especially violent crime, starting in 1950, a decline was first noted in the
1990s and, over time, this trend was confirmed. Against all the odds, all types of crime
Corresponding author:
Esther Fernández-Molina, Research Group in Criminology and Juvenile Delinquency, University of Castilla-La
Mancha, Benjamín Palencia Building, Campus Universitario s/n, Albacete, 02071, Spain.
Email: esther.fdez@uclm.es
792383EUC0010.1177/1477370818792383European Journal of CriminologyFernández Molina and Bartolomé Gutiérrez
research-article2018
Article
Fernández Molina and Bartolomé Gutiérrez 307
began to decrease substantially, thus reversing what had been an upward forecast. Some
criminologists such as Blumstein and Wallman (2006) or Zimring (2006) described and
tried to explain this decline and sparked a debate in an attempt to come up with alterna-
tive explanations. An ageing population, stronger economies, increased gun control, the
rise in incarceration rates, bigger police forces, better preventive policing, the overall
drop in crack cocaine use, and some more provocative explanations such as the legaliza-
tion of abortion or less lead poisoning, were the main hypotheses proposed.
The decline in US crime was repeated in many other Western countries, some earlier
and others later, and experts began to speak of a crime drop on an international scale
(Tseloni et al., 2010). The internationalization of the phenomenon forced researchers to
rethink some of the explanations put forward, which did not hold up outside the context
of North America, and to come up with more universal hypotheses (Tonry, 2014).
The debate that emerged in Europe was especially interesting because the crime drop
was even called into question. Thus, although a decline in property crime and lethal vio-
lence was indeed confirmed, the same cannot be said about all other violent crime, which
appears to continue to rise (Aebi and Linde, 2010). The need to take account of how
crime figures are computed (Tonry, 2014) and to standardize crime measurement in
Europe has been raised (Aebi and Linde, 2010). However, the problem seems to extend
beyond official data and specific validity and reliability issues since the use of other
alternative sources has also led to discrepancies. Thus, whereas some argue that, with
alternative sources of information, the decline in violent crime does not hold up (Killias
and Lanfranconi, 2012), others suggest the opposite (Estrada, 2006).
In any case, there is no consensus regarding the drop in the international crime rate,
or at least not with the same characteristics in all countries or at the same time (Killias
and Lanfranconi, 2012). Nor can one speak of a drop in total crime because the most
recent analyses have found that crime has not declined uniformly among all population
groups (Butts and Evans, 2014; Estrada et al., 2016; Kim et al., 2015, Nilsson et al.,
2017).
In short, there is still much to learn about the crime drop and its possible causes.
Criminology is facing a major challenge and it is up to criminologists to reflect on this
because we may be overlooking important lessons for criminal policy and practice
(Tseloni et al., 2010).
The aim of this work is to determine whether juvenile crime is decreasing in Spain.
We then test the explanatory capacity of some of the hypotheses applicable to the Spanish
context. Aggregate data from the police and self-reported data are used.
This analysis pursues three objectives. First, because it has been argued that young
people are largely responsible for the crime drop (Butts and Evans, 2014; Kim et al.,
2015), an analysis limited to trends in juvenile delinquency rates is relevant. Second, the
availability of the third round of the International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD-
3) allows us to analyse self-reported juvenile delinquency trends as an alternative source
to official data and reduces criminal data validity problems in trend analysis (Elonheimo,
2014). Third, it makes sense to conduct a case study in an alternative country, different
from those on which current crime trend studies have focused (Howard et al., 2000) since
a crime drop is not necessarily an inevitable universal phenomenon (Killias and
Lanfranconi, 2012).
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