• Corpus ID: 14751824

Does Age or Poverty Level Best Predict Criminal Arrest and Homicide Rates? A Preliminary Investigation

@inproceedings{Brown2011DoesAO,
  title={Does Age or Poverty Level Best Predict Criminal Arrest and Homicide Rates? A Preliminary Investigation},
  author={Elizabeth A. Brown and Mike A. Males},
  year={2011}
}

• Elizabeth A. Brown, M. Males
• Published 2011
• Psychology, Law, Sociology

High criminal arrest and homicide mortality levels among young people are often attributed to biological and developmental flaws innate to adolescence. A special data run by the California Criminal Justice Statistics Center detailing arrests by offense, age, and race/ethnicity for 2006 provides new opportunities to examine the relationship between demographic and socioeconomic factors and crime outcomes by age. Preliminary rate and bivariate regression analyses find that poverty is more concentrated in younger than older ages, low poverty status is strongly connected to higher levels of criminal arrest and homicide for every age, and poverty level is a significantly larger predictor of arrest and homicide risk than is age. The conclusion that higher rates of crime and murder among young ages, like high rates among African Americans, relate more to low socioeconomic status than to innate characteristics adhering to age challenges prevailing notions of the " crime proneness " of adolescents.