Poverty, not the 'teenage brain' account for high rates of teen crime

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-03/sp-pnt030315.php

Public Release: 5-Mar-2015
SAGE Publications

While many blame the "teenage brain" for high rates of teen crime, violence, and driving incidents, an important factor has been ignored: teenagers as a group suffer much higher average poverty rates than do older adults. A new study out today in SAGE Open finds that teenagers are no more naturally crime-prone than any other group with high poverty rates.

"Within every race and community, adolescents suffer poverty rates two to three times higher than older adults do," stated study author Mike Males, Senior Research Fellow at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, San Francisco. "It is astonishing that researchers have compiled decades of theories and claims about teenagers' supposed risk-taking, impulsiveness, brain deficiencies, and crime-proneness without examining whether these are due to young people's low socioeconomic status, not young age."

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