“In numerous developed countries, youth crime has declined significantly since the 1990s. This is the conclusion reached by criminologists Dietrich Oberwittler (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law) and Robert Svensson (University of Malmö), who have summarized and evaluated the empirical research on youth crime to date. This research takes into account both official crime statistics and surveys of young people on unreported crime. The researchers also used data from an international school survey on the health behavior of young people in 36 countries, which has been ongoing since 2002.

The trend is clear: Youth crime has been declining since the 1990s. Police data show this first in the US, and later also in European countries such as Germany, Switzerland, England, and Wales. After 2015, the trend stabilized in many of the countries studied. However, the declines are not equally strong across all offenses. For example, property crimes declined more sharply than violent crimes in many countries.

At the same time, the gender gap in youth crime has narrowed. Whereas the crime rate used to be higher among boys than among girls, this difference has decreased in recent years because the propensity to commit crimes has fallen more sharply among boys than among girls.”

From Max Planck Society.