The Crime Curve of Turkey: Does crime decrease with age?

Abstract

Age distribution of crime is one of the few issues in criminology that received sufficient attention in the West. Some scholars argued that this age distribution is adequately invariant over time, place and type of crime; whereas, others admit that this distribution differs over place and type of crime. Although age-crime curve looks similar in many ways, in fact, a slight difference has been recognized in most countries. This age-crime curve may also help out to focus more on the causes of criminality of specific age groups. Establishing this age distribution is also important because it may play a guiding role for law enforcement personnel and in constructing preventive programs. This article is written primarily to find out how age-crime curve looks like in Turkey. In doing this, prison statistics used here as the primary source.