According to a new national poll, approximately half of Americans now say crime is an “extremely” or “very” serious problem. This marks the second straight year national concern has declined.

That shift reflects a real sense of progress: Violent crime rates have fallen in most cities since their pandemic-era highs, and headlines about crime spikes have grown rarer. But beneath those trends lies a quieter transformation. Crime itself is changing, and so are the people involved.

For decades, criminologists described the “age-crime curve,” the consistent pattern showing that offenders commit the greatest number of crimes in their late teens or early twenties before declining with maturity. Yet recent arrest data show that curve has shifted rightward. Arrests for aggravated assault, burglary and larceny-theft now cluster around age 32 — roughly a decade older than the classic model predicted. Even for violent offenses like robbery, rape and murder, the median arrest age has increased by several years compared with 2000.

The same pattern appears among victims. National homicide and mortality statistics show that the average age of murder victims rose from about 34 in 2020 to 36 in 2024.

© The Hill