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377 The relationship between aging and criminal activity has been noted since the beginnings of criminology. For example, Adolphe Quetelet (1831/1984) found that the proportion of the population involved in crime tends to peak in adolescence or early adulthood and then decline with age. In contemporary times, the FBI s Uniform crime Report (UCR) arrest data (1935 1997), particularly the crime Index (homicide, robbery, rape, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, auto theft), document the consistency of the age effect on crime . They also reveal a long-term trend toward younger age- crime distributions in more modern times. Today, the peak age- crime involvement (the age group with the highest age-spe-cific arrest rate) is younger than 25 for all crimes reported in the FBI s UCR pro-gram except gambling, and rates begin to decline in the late teenage years for more than half of the UCR crimes. Even the median age (50% of all arrests occurring among younger persons) is younger than 30 for most crimes.

the age-crime relationship is overstated, and that sociologically important variation exists across historical periods, societies, crime types, and groups in specific fea-tures of the age-crime relationship (e.g., peak age, median age, rate of decline from peak age). We note many social factors that are widely thought to shape and struc-

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