Age and the Distribution of Crime in Botswana, Africa: Comparisons with the USA, Taiwan, South Korea, Namibia, and HG Invariance Norm

Abstract

We extend scarce research on the age-crime relationship involving Global South countries by investigating age-arrest patterns in the African countries of Botswana and Namibia. Our analysis included comparisons of Botswana age-crime distributions with (a) the reverse J-shaped invariance curve proposed by Hirschi and Gottfredson; (b) US age-arrest curves; and (c) Taiwan and South Korea age-arrest curves. On the one hand, the findings revealed considerable divergence in Botswana age-crime patterns compared with the HG invariance projection. On the other hand, there was considerable similarity of Botswana age-arrest distributions with those observed in Taiwan and South Korea (i.e., collectivist countries) as reported recently by Steffensmeier and colleagues. Within all these nations, we find “older” age-crime curves yielded by low prevalence of adolescent and young-adult crime combined with higher midlife rates (30–49), as opposed to US age patterns and the HG invariance premise that display high adolescent rates in combination with smaller young-adult rates and shrinking midlife rates. Future directions for studying “why” societies differ in age-crime patterns entail going beyond the study of adolescence (only) to also address what happens in peoples’ lives past adolescence—i.e., what pressures, strains, temptations, circumstances, and crime opportunities are faced by peoples during the 30 s and 40 s, the midlife stage.