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Gender Variation in the Age-Crime Relation in Cross-National Context: Taiwan-US Comparison

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Abstract

Purpose

Hirschi and Gottfredson’s premise of a ubiquitous adolescent-driven age-crime relation is widely endorsed, yet empirical tests have relied almost solely on non-disaggregated western data reflecting male patterns. Joint effects of gender and age have been strongly assumed but not broadly tested. To examine the invariance thesis, we probed for conditioning effects of gender and social context by comparing gender-age-crime patterns in an East Asian society, Taiwan, with those in the USA.

Methods

Unique disaggregated arrest data for Taiwan and the USA were leveraged to determine whether there were within- as well as between-country differences in the age-gender-crime relation and whether the age-gender distributions were invariant across social groups and cultures.

Results

Major findings were as follows: (1) striking within-country similarity in age distributions of male and female offenders; and (2) considerable between-country dissimilarity in age-crime schedules of males and females: Taiwan male and female age-crime curves were less peaked and older than the US male and female age-crime curves, diverging from the widely-held premise of a ubiquitous adolescent-spiked age-crime curve.

Conclusion

Strong cross-national variation in the age-crime relation, paired with remarkable gender similarity within nations, support life course approaches attentive to social context and suggest considerable mutability of any biological processes shaping the age-crime, the gender-crime, and the gender-age-crime relation.

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Notes

  1. For evidence of the age-crime relation in non-western nations, see references: (Hiraiwa-Hasegawa 2005; Jeong 2012; Steffensmeier et al., 2018; Steffensmeier et al., 2020). For historical data that covers non-western societies, see references: (Cavan and Cavan 1968; Schlegel and Barry 1991).

  2. Taiwan’s data collection system is highly centralized, using standardized offense definitions and collecting near-complete data from almost all precincts. All offenses used in the current study have comparable definitions across the two countries. For more detail on comparability of offense definitions, or an in-depth review of the Taiwan data, see (Hsieh and Schwartz 2018).

  3. We also used 3-year moving average to smooth the individual-age-specific rates, particularly for Taiwan where small frequency of female arrests in some age groups may be prone to random fluctuations.

  4. Because we use population rather than sample data, we focus on the different parameters of the age-arrest distribution rather than relying on the P value for statistical significance. P value and statistical significance tests are less relevant in the analysis of population data unless it is referencing the “super-population” (Alexander 2015; Berk et al., 1995). We are not making any statistical inferences outside the range of each specific country or the specific period.

  5. For an offense such as robbery, the low base rate for females in Taiwan may contribute to instability in portraying the age-crime distribution.

  6. This issue of gender- (and gender-by-age) bias in (TW) police statistics also is relevant, but unexplored in prior literature. One recent study of sex-specific arrest data in Taiwan showed (a) gender gaps were consistent with historical data on offending differences by sex in other nations; and (b) net-widening social control practices (i.e., increased use of arrest) by and large did not seem to disparately affect female arrests in TW as they do in the US, perhaps due to greater egalitarianism in policing (see (Hsieh and Schwartz 2018) for a fuller discussion).

  7. The 2014 National Survey of Substance Use involved face to face interviews with a nationally representative sample of 17,837 individuals.

  8. To our knowledge, TYP is the only longitudinal, nationally sampled self-report survey of Taiwan youth about their risky and illegal involvements (Yi 2013).

  9. Our findings are also consistent with qualitative information collected from interviews with observers knowledgeable about age-crime patterns and gender-specific lifestyles and practices in Taiwan as compared to the United States.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Pennsylvania State University, 1016 Oswald Tower, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Darrell Steffensmeier

  2. University at Buffalo, SUNY, 430 Park Hall, Buffalo, NY, 14260, USA

    Yunmei Lu

  3. Washington State University, Wilson-Short Hall 240, Pullman, WA, 99164-4020, USA

    Jennifer Schwartz

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  1. Darrell Steffensmeier
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  2. Yunmei Lu
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Contributions

DS conceived of the study, participated in the design, interpretation and coordination of the study, and drafted the manuscript. YL participated in the design of the study, performed the statistical analysis and interpret the data, and helped to draft the manuscript. JS participated in the design of the study and the interpretation of the data and helped to draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Darrell Steffensmeier.

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Steffensmeier, D., Lu, Y. & Schwartz, J. Gender Variation in the Age-Crime Relation in Cross-National Context: Taiwan-US Comparison. J Dev Life Course Criminology 7, 623–648 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40865-021-00176-6

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