prisons recidivism and the age crime profile

Did the abolition of capital punishment and penal transportation, which led to the rise of the modern day prison system and the emergence of recidivism, lead to a mechanical increase in

bCEPR, United Kingdom

h i g h l i g h t s

• Historical data set of over 120,000 cases at the Old Bailey in 19th century London

• U-shape trend in convict age: steep decrease until 1820, then steady increase

• Use of prisons (instead of death or transportation) led to concept of recidivism

• Propose that the rise of prisons and recidivism mechanically led to older convicts

• First historical data on recidivism

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Received 13 October 2016

Accepted 1 January 2017

Available online 3 January 2017

JEL classification:

J10

K14

K40

N33

N43

Keywords:

Age–crime profile

Industrial revolution

Prison

Punishment

Recidivism

a b s t r a c t

This paper provides a descriptive analysis of the economic and non-economic channels that led to a U-shaped trend in the average age of male convicts in 19th century London using detailed data from the Old Bailey central criminal court In addition to discussing industrialization and changing attitudes towards juveniles as potential mechanisms underlying the initial decrease and subsequent increase in criminal age, we put forth a new explanation of the latter Did the abolition of capital punishment and penal transportation, which led to the rise of the modern day prison system and the emergence of recidivism, lead to a mechanical increase in the average age of criminals?

© 2017 The Authors Published by Elsevier B.V This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

1 Introduction

One of the most commonly cited stylized facts about the

de-mographics of criminals throughout the world and history is the

age–crime profile, which typically increases in the teenage years,

peaks around age 19 or 20, and then gradually decreases.Fig 1

shows the profile for both arrestees in the United States in 1980

✩ This paper would not have been possible without the tremendous efforts of our

Research Assistant Michael Bekele, the generous help with the data extraction by

Florin Maican, and the financial support of Foundation for Economic Research in

West Sweden (no 2250-242 334), and Vetenskapsrådet (no 446-2014-1735), The

Swedish Research Council, Grants for Distinguished Young Researchers.

∗Correspondence to: Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg,

Vasagatan 1, 41124 Göteborg, Sweden.

E-mail address:randi.hjalmarsson@economics.gu.se (R Hjalmarsson).

and almost 120,000 convicts at the Old Bailey in London between

1800 and 1900: despite the different continents and more than

100 years in between, the age–crime profiles are remarkably sim-ilar

Though criminologists have extensively studied the age–crime relationship, economists have only recently contributed to the debate.Grogger(1998) asks whether market wages explain the age–crime profile, a natural question in the context of theBecker

(1968) model of crime—the opportunity cost of crime increases with labor market experience as individuals age.Lochner(2004) develops a human capital based model of crime, which predicts an age–crime profile that peaks at or before the age of labor market entry More recently, Landerso et al (forthcoming) study how school starting age affects the age–crime profile

While the general shape of the age distribution is constant, its moments (mean and dispersion) can shift over time One such example is the rightward-shift in the age distribution of convicts

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2017.01.002

0165-1765/ © 2017 The Authors Published by Elsevier B.V This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ).

Fig 1 Offender-age profiles Note: share of convicts at the Old Bailey (1800–1900)

and share of arrests in the US (1980) by 5-year age intervals.

Source: Old Bailey Online Proceedings; BJS1 ; own calculations.

Fig 2 Convict-age profiles Note: age distributions of male convicts at the Old

Bailey.

Source: Old Bailey Online Proceedings; BJS (see footnote 1); own calculations.

at the Old Bailey in the latter half of the 19th century (seeFig 2)

Similar shifts have been studied in US prisons since the 1970s

(Porter et al., 2016) This paper focuses on understanding the

potential economic and non-economic channels that underlie the

shift in the age–crime profile in 19th century London, with an

emphasis on the Industrial Revolution, changing attitudes, and the

rise of imprisonment as the primary sanction

2 The age of convicted offenders at the Old Bailey

As the central criminal court for the City of London and

sur-rounding Middlesex, the Old Bailey tried the most serious crimes

in Victorian times Detailed information on the defendant, charge,

verdict, and sentence of each case were recorded in The Proceedings

of the Old Bailey The Old Bailey Proceedings Online has digitized this

historical data source and provided xml files for each of the 2000

court sessions SeeBindler and Hjalmarsson(2016) for more details

on the data and context

The primary variable of interest is defendant age One data

limitation is that the Proceedings only consistently reported age

1 Snyder, H and Mulako-Wangota, J., Arrest Data Analysis Tool (29-Sep-16) at

Fig 3 Average age and share of juvenile convicts Note: average age and share of

juveniles of male convicts at the Old Bailey (property crime).

Source: Old Bailey Proceedings Online; own calculations.

Fig 4 Criminal history and prison sentences Note: share of male convicts for

property crime at the Old Bailey with any criminal history or prison sentences.

Source: SeeFig 3

for those found guilty; we cannot say anything about the age of those acquitted (25% of the sample from 1800 to 1900) Prior to

1789, age is missing for 99% of those convicted (in addition to those acquitted).2

Fig 3shows the average age of the 69,537 male offenders con-victed of property crime, as well as the share of juvenile (below age 18) convicts.3We focus on male property offenders (i) because at that time property offenses and male defendants comprise 71% and 83%, respectively, of all convicted cases and (ii) to ease comparison withVickers and Ziebarth’s(2016) analysis of age at the Old Bai-ley from 1835 to 1913.4The average age is U-shaped between 1800 and 1900, with a steep (17%) decrease from 29 to 24 years between

1800 and 1820, and a less steep but steady increase thereafter The share of juvenile offenders mirrors that pattern with an increase from 11% to 27%, respectively, and a steady decrease afterwards What explains these relatively large and ‘quick’ changes in convict age?

2 See: https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Population-history-of-london jsp#demography

3 Property crimes include animal theft, arson, burglary, housebreaking, larceny, mail, receiving, shoplifting, stealing from master, and theft from place.

4 It is our understanding that Vickers and Ziebarth ( 2016 ) only had post-1835

Fig 5 Average age by selected offense Note: average age of male convicts for larceny, pocket picking, housebreaking and burglary at the Old Bailey (For interpretation of

the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

Source: SeeFig 3

3 The industrial revolution

Researchers offer conflicting arguments regarding the impact

of the Industrial Revolution on the age composition of criminals in

19th century London On the one hand,Vickers and Ziebarth(2016)

argue that the Industrial Revolution led to younger generations

gaining the specific skills necessary in the ‘new labor market’, and

displaced older workers (especially males) into the criminal labor

market, thereby increasing the average age of criminals Using the

Old Bailey data from 1835 to 1913, the authors demonstrate an

increase in the average age of male property offenders

However,Fig 3casts some doubt on theVickers and Ziebarth

(2016) theory: the increase in average criminal age is only seen

af-ter 1820, despite the fact that the Industrial Revolution was fully

under way in the early 1800s.5That is, their graph starts at the

bot-tom of the U-shaped curve inFig 3 In addition, if industrialization

displaced older workers into crime, it is hard to reconcile this with

the persistent increase in the average age of criminals over a time

period of 80 years AsMokyr(1990) points out, ‘‘many workers

dis-placed by machinery eventually found employment in the

facto-ries’’

On the other hand, historians have linked industrialization

with the decreasing average criminal age in the early 1800s.King

(2000) reviews these arguments, which are typically predicated

5 According to Mokyr ( 1990 ), the Ïndustrial Revolution is usually dated between

on the assumption of a rapidly growing and predominantly young population, a flood of young migrants turning to crime instead

of adapting, or the process of industrialization and the growth

of factories itself, leading to a rise in juvenile crime However,

King(2000) points out that ‘‘the capital [of London] witnessed

no fundamental changes Its service sector remained large and its manufacturing sector was notable for the absence of major restructuring ’’

While we cannot rule out that the Industrial Revolution contributed to either the fall or rise in average criminal age, a more nuanced understanding is clearly necessary to reconcile the patterns observed inFig 3 This paper emphasizes two alternative channels through which the age composition of convicts may have been affected

4 Changing attitudes towards juveniles

One possibility is that it is not criminal behavior that is chang-ing, but rather the behavior of the magistrates and courts First,

King(2000) suggests that the observed ‘increase’ in juvenile crime can be attributed to victims and magistrates becoming more will-ing to hold juveniles responsible, especially once capital punish-ment was abolished Second, one could argue that the subsequent increase in average age is an explicit reaction to the increasing number of juvenile ‘offenders’ in the early 1800s According to

King(2000), there was an increased use of summary judgments— decisions by magistrates rather than juries However, as demon-strated byVickers and Ziebarth(2016), the average offender age

tually, the Penal Servitude Acts of 1853 and 1857 (primarily the

former) abolished transportation Without capital punishment or

transportation, England turned towards imprisonment as the

pri-mary sanction.6

For the sample of males convicted of a property crime,Fig 4

shows the share with a known criminal history and the share

sentenced to prison We manually coded criminal history, which

is recorded (but not tagged) in the Proceedings from the 1830s

onwards, and indicates whether the defendant had been in custody

once before (from 1832), more than once (from 1839) or whether

they were known associates of bad character (from 1835) Albeit

not perfect,7it is perhaps the first measure of recidivism.

The share of convicted males with a known criminal history is

clearly trending up throughout the 19th century Likewise, there is

a continual increase in the share sentenced to prison—from around

30% in 1832 to more than 80% by the end of the century Note

that the share of prison sentences increases very sharply upon the

abolition of transportation

Finally, how did these changes in sentence regimes affect the

age of criminals?Fig 5shows the average age of male convicts for

larceny, pick-pocketing, housebreaking and burglary.8 Note that

pick-pocketing is included in the larceny measure, but seems to

be especially important for the increase in juvenile crime at the

beginning of the 18th century For both larceny and pick-pocketing,

6 See Bindler and Hjalmarsson ( 2016 ) for more details.

7 For instance, it is hard to know how offenses committed in other jurisdictions

are tracked.

8 Available for other offenses upon request.

Understanding the sources of shifts in the age-distribution of crime is essential from a policy perspective Which subset of the population should criminal justice policies target? Though we discuss the role that penal institutions may play in shaping the age–crime profile in a historical context, this is clearly a question

of modern day relevance

References

Becker, Gary, 1968 Crime and punishment: An economic approach J Polit Econ.

76 (2), 169–217.

Bindler, Anna, Hjalmarsson, Randi, 2016 The fall of capital punishment and the rise of prisons How punishment severity affects jury verdicts University of Gothenburg Working Papers in Economics 674.

Grogger, Jeff, 1998 Market wages and youth crime J Labor Econ 16 (4), 756–791.

King, Peter, 2000 Crime and Law in England, 1750-1840 Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, p 348.

Landerso, Rasmus, Nielsen, Helena Skyt, Simonsen, Marianne, School starting age and the crime-age profile Econom J (forthcoming).

Lochner, Lance, 2004 Education, work and crime: A human capital approach Internat Econom Rev 45 (3), 811–843.

Mokyr, Joel, 1990 The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress Oxford University Press, p 349.

Porter, Lauren, Bushway, Shawn, Tsao, Hui-Shien, Smith, Herbert, 2016 How the

US prison boom has changed the age distribution of the prison population Criminology 54 (1), 30–55.

Vickers, Chris, Ziebarth, Nicolas L., 2016 Economic development and the demographics of criminals in Victorian England J Law Econ 59, 191–223.