So if I get your theory right... the crimerate increased because the number of people at a "prime" age for committing crime increased... and the decrease comes as those people get "too old" and there are less younger people to take it up.

That's genius in it's simplicity.

Essentially, yes.

I believe that there were social/economic issues developed with that generation due to the hyper-birth rate. So when they matured to a crime-committing age, it was a (literal) crime bomb. Once that generation sorted itself out, aged, or died, the crime rates decreased. We also had multiple deflationary factors after that generation such as the growth bust, abortion, education, ect.

Here is a chart of US live births during the 20th century:

Now lets look at the crime rate per capita - sadly, just from the early 60s:

Looking at the data, if you add 18 years to the birth rates, you get the potential 'crime increase' years of 1965 through about 1990 - using years that birth rates were >2.5 per woman.

What years did crime have the worst increases or sustained rates of horrible crime? 1965 to 1990. Likewise, once birth rates saw major decreases in the 70's, we saw a continual reduction in crime during the 90s. It may also help us understand future crime rates - that is, that we should stay relatively low.

Just something to consider.

Tonight, I will pick it apart further using further data, but as you can see from the 2 charts - if you align them according to a 18 year lead time for birth rates, it matches up perfectly with the increase of crime.

I don’t know, one of the things I attribute to reduction in crime over the past couple of decades is a steady increase in things for teenagers to do; and after they get past the age where juvenile delinquency “Catches On” the likelihood that they will choose a life of crime is greatly reduced. Consider videogames as one example of this, every hour that teenagers are sitting at home playing videogames is an hour where their parents know where they are; and the child is unlikely to be committing any crime at the same time. Between sports, music lessons, tutoring, television, videogames, the internet and countless other activities and distractions that children have today the average teenager probably doesn’t have the time to engage in being a hoodlum today.

Certainly true.

But look at the parenting side of it, too -

Which parents do you think, on average, are going to better nurture their kids? The family with 2 or 3 kids, or the ones with 4 or 5?

On the other end of it, if 'things to do' caused a reduction in crime, what about years prior to the horribad 60s through 80s?

From what source is that data culled?