Research by social scientists shows that criminals, even violent ones, mature out of lawbreaking before middle age, The Marshall Project's Dana Goldstein reports: "Homicide and drug-arrest rates peak at age 19, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, while arrest rates for forcible rape peak at 18. Some crimes, such as vandalism, crest even earlier, at age 16, while arrest rates for forgery, fraud and embezzlement peak in the early 20s. For most of the crimes the F.B.I. tracks, more than half of all offenders will be arrested by the time they are 30."
The reasons for this are myriad. The parts of the brain that govern risk and reward are not fully developed until age 25. And some crimes are too physically taxing for older people.
And the problem, Goldstein reports, is that sentencing in the U.S. is out of whack with this research. Forty-seven percent of federal inmates are serving sentences of more than 10 years, which is longer than the typical duration of a criminal career. And many people are being kept in prison even though they are physically unable to threaten anybody, Goldstein concludes.
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