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The International Youth Crime Drop: Evidence and Explanations
University of Freiburg.
Malmö University, Faculty of Health and Society (HS), Department of Criminology (KR).ORCID iD: 0000-0002-6080-2780
2025 (English)In: Crime and justice, ISSN 0192-3234, E-ISSN 2153-0416, Vol. 54, p. 153-216Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Youth crime and other types of risk behavior have declined considerably over the last 20–30 years in many developed countries. Robust evidence comes from both official crime data and repeated self-report surveys, one of them covering 36 countries in Europe over 20 years. Since 2015, the decline appears to have leveled off, with a reversal for property crimes in some European countries. Disaggregated crime trends show some but no unequivocal signs of “polarization” between declining prevalence rates and constant or increasing incidence rates, in particular for violent offenses. They also provide conflicting signs of social or ethnic inequalities in the crime drop. Studies based on repeated cross-sectional surveys from the United States and Scandinavia, looking at microlevel proximal influences, have made progress in finding explanations of the crime drop. These studies find that declines in unstructured socializing with peers and in alcohol consumption are the two strongest predictors of declining rates of offending over time, supporting routine activity approaches. The roles of the internet and social media in social changes of adolescents’ life experiences remain unclear and underexplored.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
University of Chicago Press , 2025. Vol. 54, p. 153-216
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Other Legal Research
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URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-80000DOI: 10.1086/737409ISI: 001583976000001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105018004207OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-80000DiVA, id: diva2:2006285
Available from: 2025-10-14 Created: 2025-10-14 Last updated: 2026-01-08Bibliographically approved

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Svensson, Robert

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