CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR

An eighty-year-old man is convicted of second-degree criminal solicitation for offering a substantial sum of money to have his business partner of forty years murdered. A woman, seventy-two years old, robs a female acquaintance, age ninety-one, at gunpoint. A restaurant supply delivery man argues with a bank security guard after double-parking his truck and blocking three of the bank's parking spaces and is shot to death by the sixty-seven-year-old security guard.

Why do these events seem so out of place? Should such violent acts by older adults surprise us? In fact, real-life incidents such as these are somewhat unusual, but there are more and more of them in the news. Probably the most widely accepted truism in the field of criminology is that criminal activity declines sharply as age increases. According to Uniform Crime Report data compiled for 1997, only 0.2 percent of the U.S. population 65 years of age and older was arrested for any criminal offense, compared to 7.7 percent of those age 25 to 29 and 2.5 percent of those age 45 to 49.

However, number of arrests may be a particularly poor indicator of actual criminal activity taking place among the older population. Anecdotal evidence exists to suggest that older individuals are less likely than younger people to be arrested, at least for minor offenses. Police may exercise considerable discretion and choose not to make any arrest out of deference—or pity— for older persons. Such "special" treatment could change, of course, as older persons form a larger segment of the population in coming decades. Be that as it may, the proportion of crimes committed by older adults will grow as the ranks of older individuals increase from 12.6 percent of the total U.S. population in 2000 to 13.2 percent in 2010 and to approximately 20 percent by 2030.

The substance abuse factor

Another reason that the portion of total crimes that involves arrests of older persons seems destined to grow is that future cohorts of older adults will include a significantly larger number of individuals who have a history of moderate to heavy drinking (and problem drinking) than has been the case in the past. Indeed, alcohol misuse already appeared more frequently in the older population in 2000 than in previous cohorts. Although the exact role played by alcohol is not well understood, it is clearly associated with the commission of a significant proportion of crimes. The prevalence of illicit drug use, while not as strongly associated by itself with criminal acts as is alcohol, will also almost certainly be higher among future cohorts of older persons, as they will be more likely to have been at least recreational users of these drugs when young. The combination of illicit drugs and alcohol, especially if used in combination with medications, may increase the number of serious criminal acts committed by older individuals.

Crimes older adults commit

Despite their very low profile among those who commit crimes, older adults have proven themselves capable of committing the full spectrum of criminal offenses, from misdemeanors to heinous violent acts. Fortunately, the relative frequency of offenses committed by older adults follows essentially the same pattern as that of younger offenders: the less serious crimes occur far more frequently. Period effects, at least those in the 1990s, also seem to apply equally across generations—the fairly dramatic downturn in serious crime in the U.S. between 1995 and 1999 occurred among those sixty-five and older just as it did among those age eighteen to twenty-nine.

Specifically, then, what types of crime are older adults most likely to engage in? National Uniform Crime Report data covering 1998 indicate that the ten offense categories for which older adults are most likely to be arrested, in descending order of frequency, are: DWI/DUI; larceny/theft; drunkenness; assault; aggravated assault; disorderly conduct; white-collar crime; drug offenses; liquor violations; and sex offenses.

Explanations for criminal behavior

Four of these categories are directly alcohol- or drug-related, and four others (assault, aggravated assault, disorderly conduct, and sex offenses) are behaviors in which alcohol abuse is often found to be involved. Other potential explanations of older adult criminality include: misuse or interaction of prescription and over-the-counter medicines, sometimes yielding behavioral results similar to those from alcohol or dementia; cerebral degeneration, such as Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia; and depression, social isolation, and boredom, which can all lead to alcohol abuse or other reckless behavior. Anecdotal evidence suggests that (for older men, at least) getting into trouble with the law for the first time may follow an emotionally traumatic event (such as the death of a spouse) or a deterioration in physical health. These possible explanations apply principally to late-onset criminal behaviors. Older offenders who have been "career criminals" commit crimes, undoubtedly, for many of the same reasons that recidivists of any age do.

Sentencing of older offenders

Overall, older adults receive more lenient sentences than younger persons for the same offenses. Exceptions to this pattern occur for drug offenses, where sentencing disparities are far narrower. A study of sentencing outcomes in Pennsylvania covering the 1991–1994 period revealed that those sixty and older sentenced for nondrug offenses were 26 percent less likely to receive a prison sentence than were offenders age twenty to twenty-nine, and the terms of those sentenced to prison averaged nearly eleven months less than the sentences of those age twenty to twenty-nine (Steffensmeier and Motivans, 2000).

The reasons for this disparity remain unclear, but they undoubtedly include a perception that older adults pose a lesser danger to society and that they have fewer years of life remaining, so a harsher sentence imposes a greater burden on older than on younger individuals.

Given the disparity between older and younger offenders in sentencing, it is little wonder that the most common offenses of older adults who are sentenced to probation, jail, or prison differ somewhat from the most common charges filed against older adults at the point of arrest and booking. In Florida, for example, the state with the highest proportion of residents sixty and older, nearly one-quarter (24 percent) of those under correctional supervision but not incarcerated in 1999–2000 were being supervised for sexual offenses; 21.5 percent were being supervised for theft, forgery or fraud; 18.0 percent for violent personal offenses; and 13.8 percent for drug offenses. While the order of primary offense categories was similar among Florida prison inmates sixty years of age and older during this same period, the second highest proportion (19.5 percent), was incarcerated for drug offenses, which was the top category (28.5 percent) among inmates under sixty years of age. These figures do not distinguish inmates according to criminal history or age when they committed the crime for which they were imprisoned. Those admitted to state prisons for the first time as older adults typically have been sentenced for very serious crimes.

The older prisoner population is growing rapidly, in part due to stiffer sentencing and reduced use of parole in most states in the late twentieth century. This very substantial expansion of the older prisoner population, which tends to be significantly less healthy than older adults in the noninstitutionalized population, is a cause for growing concern among state policy-makers. The cost of caring for a chronically ill prisoner is estimated to be about three times higher, on average, than that for a similar patient outside of prison.

Burton Dunlop Max B. Rothman

See also Alcoholism; Criminal Victimization; Drugs and Aging.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Florida Department of Corrections Bureau of Research and Data Analysis. Tallahassee, Fla.: Florida Department of Corrections.

Kerbs, J. J. "The Older Prisoner: Social, Psychological, and Medical Considerations." In Elders, Crime, and the Criminal Justice System: Myth, Perception, and Reality in the 21st Century. Edited by Max B. Rothman, Burton D. Dunlop, and Pamela Entzel. New York, N.Y.: Springer Publishing Company, Inc., 2000. Pages 207–228.

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). Ninth Special Report to the U.S. Congress on Alcohol and Health. NIH Pub. No. 97-4017. Bethesda, Md.: NIAAA, 1997.

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). Tenth Special Report to the U.S. Congress on Alcohol and Health. NIH Pub. No. 00-1583. Bethesda, Md.: NIAAA, 2000.

Pastore, A. L., and Maguire, K., eds. Sourecebook of Criminal Justice Statistics. World Wide Document. www.albany.edu

Steffensmeier, D. , and Motivans, M. "Sentencing the Older Offender: Is There an Age Bias?" In Elders, Crime, and the Criminal Justice System: Myth, Reality and Perception in the 21st Century. Edited by Max B. Rothman, Burton D. Dunlop, and Pamela Entzel. New York, N.Y.: Springer Publishing Company, Inc., 2000. Pages 185–205.