How Old Are Criminals Usually When They Commit Crimes?

Your gut feeling might be that it's a young man's thing -- and you'd be right.  But perhaps surprisingly, it wasn't until the early 1980s that it became accepted as "fact" that young people, especially teenage men, are most prone to committing crimes.  That's when conclusive research was published showing that the problem spanned cultures and time; young people are the troublemakers everywhere and always have been.  It isn't just an artefact of how we live here and now.  

Biological as well as social forces seem to come into play.  The likelihood of a person committing crime steadily declines after age 17, with a small increase in criminal propensity around age 35, followed by further steady decline.  What happens at age 35?  It's about the age when people who have been locked away in prison for long periods get released again.

A lot of research as gone into trying to figure out the social forces associated with youth criminality.  Poverty, poor education and low levels of ambition are the main associative factors.

In their teenage years