Crime and Social Stratification

Sample Answer

Age, Crime and Social Stratification

Introduction

I focus on the way young people in marginalised communities become criminalised through structures that connect age, poverty and social inequality. Although age and crime are often discussed as if offending naturally rises during adolescence, I argue that the relationship is more structural than biological. My aim is to challenge the idea that youth crime is simply an age-related behavioural pattern. Instead, I explore how economic exclusion, concentrated disadvantage and biased criminal justice practices shape who becomes labelled as “youth offenders.” I draw on classic and contemporary literature to show how age functions as a socially mediated category rather than a simple demographic fact. I reflect on workshop debates around social stratification, early criminalisation and the role of neighbourhood context.

Critical Argument

The most repeated claim in criminology is that offending peaks in mid-late adolescence, often described as the “age crime curve.” Hirschi and Gottfredson (1983) argue that this curve is universal and largely resistant to social influence. The problem with this argument is that it ignores the social contexts in which young people grow up. When neighbourhoods experience long-term unemployment, inadequate schooling and a lack of youth facilities, early contact with the criminal justice system becomes more likely. In this sense the age crime curve describes the policing of inequality rather than a biological tendency to offend.

Young people in lower income areas often experience higher surveillance than their middle class peers. Studies on policing practices show that stop and search rates are consistently higher in deprived neighbourhoods (Bowling and Phillips 2007). If the same behaviour is treated as youthful experimentation in one area and suspected criminality in another, then age becomes secondary to social position. During workshops this became clear when we compared how middle class teenage drug use is often handled through diversion or informal support, while working class youth in similar situations face formal criminalisation. The “age effect” therefore reflects how stratification directs police attention.

The context of austerity in Britain has intensified this problem. Research linking youth service cuts to rising levels of violence has shown that structural change rather than individual ageing explains why some communities see higher rates of youth offending (Harding 2020). When legitimate opportunities shrink, young people become more vulnerable to exploitation, including involvement in county lines networks. I find it difficult to accept explanations that place responsibility solely on adolescence itself, because the evidence shows that social conditions create the environments where harmful behaviours emerge.

Another critical issue is how criminal justice agencies interpret age. In theory, young people should be handled with greater care and diversion, yet institutional practices often contradict this principle. The over representation of young Black and minority ethnic people in youth custody has been widely reported (Lammy Review 2017). This demonstrates that age alone does not protect against punitive treatment. Instead, age interacts with race, class and neighbourhood to shape outcomes. Stratification produces different “youths” in the eyes of the state, reinforcing unequal experiences of criminal justice.

This links to the broader module discussions on social change. The shift from welfare support towards risk management has altered how society responds to young people. Behaviour once interpreted as developmental is now seen through a lens of threat. New technologies, school exclusion policies and private security have expanded the reach of surveillance into young people’s everyday spaces. This creates what Goldson (2011) describes as a climate of “penal intolerance,” where adolescence is not understood as a stage of experimentation but as a potential pathway to criminality. Young people from securely resourced households are often insulated from these changes, while those in disadvantaged communities bear the consequences.

Although the age crime curve provides useful descriptive data, it fails to offer meaningful explanations when removed from stratification. Labelling theory supports this critique by showing how early criminal justice contact increases the likelihood of further offending (Becker 1963). This means that system responses can create the very patterns they claim to detect. If adolescents in certain neighbourhoods are more likely to be stopped, arrested or sanctioned, the resulting statistics then “prove” that these groups offend more. I think this circular logic is one of the most important limitations of mainstream age-based theories.