Greenberg, David F.: Age, Capitalism, and Crime

Liena Gurevich

The relationship of age and criminality has been noted and remarked upon since the appearance of the original statistical studies of crime, such as Adolphe Quetelet's. Citing historical and cross-cultural studies, researchers had come to note that criminals seem to “age out” of crime as numbers of most offenses decline with age as indicated by arrest statistics and self-reported accounts of delinquent and criminal behavior (Hirschi, 1969; Matza, 1964). However, no serious attention has been paid to age as a social variable and as an important predictor of criminality until David F. Greenberg's analysis and application of Marxist framework to national, cross-national, and historical statistical data. Until Greenberg's article “Delinquency and the Age Structure of Society” that appeared in 1977, the age-crime connection was largely attributed to the deleterious biological effects of aging on motivational and physical capabilities of the offenders. Greenberg, a sociology professor at New York University, put ...

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