According to the Official Crime statistics most crime is committed by young people with the peak age of crime being 18 for males and 15 for females, with the majority of this crime consisting of theft and handling stolen goods which make up over 50% of all youth crimes.

Cohen states that young people have a desire to feel valued, respected and to gain status within society. He states that this age difference may exist due to young working class boys feeling alienated and angry at the low status that schools and society allocate them and experience status frustration which results in the formation of gangs or subcultures of like-minded boys who reverse the norms and values of dominant culture and award status on the basis of anti-school and delinquent behaviour. This theory was influence by Merton, who states that crime results from a strain to anomie, which is when a working class boy is unable to achieve success in society through legitimate means which results in those boys looking for this achievement through illegitimate means by committing crimes to get back at a society which did not allow them to achieve. Kintrea’s theory of gang violence reinforces this as it explains that territorial conflict with rivals from other areas heightens the sense of masculinity. This in turn allows males to gain status, respect and reputation from each other which they failed to receive from mainstream society. However, these theories fail to explain why those in the middle or upper classes may commit crimes, and also ignores the female presence in crime. Another limitation of these theories is that they ignore the social construction of crime as social control agents such as the police and the media, target the young and therefore create labels for young people being deviants and criminals, as well as this it also results in young people being over represented in crime