developmental crime prevention essay

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Publications
Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

Advanced Search
Journal List
HHS Author Manuscripts

Building Efficient Crime Prevention Strategies

D. max crowley.

Duke University

The aftermath of the global recession has encouraged policy makers to confront the staggering public burden of crime ( Cohen, 1988 , 2005 ; Ludwig, 2010 ; McCollister, French, and Fang, 2010 ; Miller, Cohen, and Rossman, 1993 ). In this context, there is growing acceptance that many “tough-on-crime” policies have become primary drivers of crime’s increasing societal cost ( Andrews and Bonta, 2010 ; Artello, 2013 ; Becker, 1968 ; Braga and Weisburd, 2011 ; Cameron, 1988 ; Cohen, 2005 ; Paternoster, 2010 ; Rikard and Rosenberg, 2007 ; Vitiello, 2013 ). Policy makers have responded with growing interest in making strategic investments in youth that prevent the development of lifetime offenders, instead of continuing to institute harsher punishments that lead to costly mass incarceration ( Dodge, 2001 ; Farrington, 1994 ; Heckman, 2006 ; Homel, 2013 ; O’Connell, Boat, and Warner, 2009 ). In response, innovative strategies for preventing crime and controlling costs are being engaged ( Barnett and Masse, 2007 ; Guyll, Spoth, and Crowley, 2011 ; Welsh and Farrington, 2010 ). At the forefront are developmental prevention programs that intervene early in life to reduce risk factors for delinquent and criminal behaviors ( Durlak, 1998 ; Eckenrode et al., 2010 ; Hawkins, Catalano, and Miller, 1992 ; Hawkins and Weis, 1985 ; Reynolds, Temple, White, Ou, and Robertson, 2011 ). As a growing body of evidence illustrates, when implemented appropriately, these developmental prevention efforts not only effectively prevent crime but also are cost-effective solutions that save public resources ( Crowley, Hill, Kuklinski, and Jones, 2013 ; Crowley, Jones, Greenberg, Feinberg, and Spoth, 2012 ; Heckman, Moon, Pinto, Savelyev, and Yavitz, 2010 ; Klietz, Borduin, and Schaeffer, 2010 ; Kuklinski, Briney, Hawkins, and Catalano, 2012 ; Reynolds et al., 2011 ).

Manning, Smith, and Homel (2013 , this issue) outline an innovative approach for valuing these programs to guide policy making. Their work draws on Saaty’s analytical hierarchy process (AHP), often used in the private sector, but less frequently in policy settings ( Saaty, 1988 ). This method ultimately provides an important framework for discussing how to build effective and efficient crime prevention efforts informed by developmental science ( Gifford-Smith, Dodge, Dishion, and McCord, 2005 ; Lerner et al., 2005 ; Osgood, 2005 ).

In this essay, I expand on Manning et al.’s (2013) discussion by highlighting how this new approach can complement current efforts to value developmental crime prevention programs for evidence-based policy making. I then discuss the importance of considering local programming capacity when investing in prevention and the economic value of prevention approaches that invest in both youth and their families (i.e., dual-generation approaches). Next, I provide a forward look at two approaches policy makers can engage when seeking to fund developmental prevention. I then conclude with four action steps for research and policy that can facilitate the dissemination of effective and efficient developmental crime prevention efforts.

Strategies for Valuing Developmental Prevention to Inform Public Policy

Broadly, the priority ranking and utility approach employed by Manning et al. (2013) is similar to ex-ante approaches used to elicit willingness-to-pay estimates around the cost of crime as well as cost-effectiveness analyses often employed in health-care decision making ( Birch and Gafni, 1992 ; Donaldson, Farrar, Mapp, Walker, and Macphee, 1997 ; Ludwig and Cook, 2001 ; Olsen and Smith, 2001 ; Zarkin, Cates, and Bala, 2000 ). Such approaches are gaining acceptance as they aim to estimate the value of preventing crime more completely—departing from ex-post approaches that rely explicitly on monetizable burden ( Brookshire and Crocker, 1981 ; Ryan and Watson, 2009 ). Furthermore, particularly for health outcomes, they avoid certain distributional problems that value morbidity and mortality at different rates for different groups (e.g., women and minorities; see Donaldson, Birch, and Gafni, 2002 ). The United Kingdom’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is one of the better known examples where national health policy is currently being informed by such utility-based approaches for valuing public services ( Kelly et al., 2010 ; Weatherly et al., 2009 ).

Although there is growing support for employing utility estimates to guide decision making, these approaches can be limited by the lack of clear cost and benefit estimates ( Marsh, Chalfin, and Roman, 2008 ; Weinstein and Manning, 1997 ). In particular, analysts scoring the fiscal impact of new policies for government bodies require robust estimates of prevention programs’ downstream costs to determine potential savings to agency budgets ( Aos, Lieb, Mayfield, Miller, and Pennucci, 2004 ; OMB, 1992 ). Several new efforts over the last 5 years have sought to promote the development of such estimates. One initiative that has gained substantial traction in the United States is the Results First Project supported by the Pew Charitable Trust and MacArthur Foundation ( Dueffert, 2012 ). This initiative partners with states to implement an innovative benefit-cost approach that assists policy makers seeking to invest in programs that can reduce crime, improve health, and result in public savings. By building tailored models of how programs impact a particular state’s budget, policy decisions can be made that are beneficial to both at-risk populations and local budgets ( Dueffert, 2013 ).

In part, the value of approaches that seek to monetize program outcomes is borne out by the ability to make estimates transferable across settings (where the value of currency is likely shared across groups). The approach outlined by Manning et al. (2013) captures a more idiographic—and possibly accurate—estimate of a group’s value of prevention programs, but this valuation is temporally and geographically bound. Specifically, a group of decision makers surveyed in one area or time may have a dramatically different valuation of a program than decision makers in another region at a different time. To use Manning et al.’s approach effectively to inform policy making, analysts will need to survey a larger sample of decision makers to develop more robust estimates. Furthermore, estimates will need to account for the larger body of prevention programs available in the marketplace. Although Manning et al. include more than 20 programs, policy makers may question valuation estimates that neglect commonly used or home-grown—even if ineffective—prevention programs. Ultimately, these programs may need to be included to facilitate decision maker buy-in.

In this context, there is a role for both utility approaches that elicit clear guidance for policy making as well as economic and fiscal analyses that place a monetary value on crime prevention programs. Next, I consider the importance of capturing infrastructure needs in program costs, the case for dual-generation programs, and promising approaches for investing in prevention.

Planning for Infrastructure and Capacity: The Costs of Developmental Crime Prevention

Recently, while accepting the 2013 Stockholm Prize in Criminology, Dr. David Farrington called for creation of national agencies to coordinate domestic prevention strategies ( Farrington, 2013 ). Although he is not the first to recognize that the patchwork of developmental crime prevention programs spanning the globe is inadequate for meeting the needs of youth at risk, Professor Farrington went further to outline the form and function of such agencies. This outline included the (a) recognition that primary crime prevention efforts are largely missing in most countries, (b) the need for continuous funding of prevention programs, and (c) the importance of building local prevention capacity. At the core of Professor Farrington’s message was that the continued lack of infrastructure and capacity to support the delivery of developmental prevention programs is a major threat to successfully preventing crime.

A closer look at the existing criminal justice, law enforcement, and education systems quickly reveals the limited capacity of localities to install and implement effective and efficient prevention efforts successfully ( Andréasson, Hjalmarsson, and Rehnman, 2000 ; Ringwalt et al., 2002 ; Spoth and Greenberg, 2011 ; Welsh, Sullivan, and Olds, 2009 ). For instance, most crime prevention is provided either when youth first enter the juvenile justice system (secondary prevention) or in an effort to prevent future recidivism (tertiary prevention; Farrington, 2013 ). These efforts are generally delivered in the context of the criminal justice system. In contrast, primary crime prevention programs have little or no natural home ( Dunworth, Mills, Cordner, and Greene, 1999 ; Hawkins and Weis, 1985 ; Hawkins et al., 2008 ; Spoth, Greenberg, Bierman, and Redmond, 2004 ). Schools generally have too many competing priorities to provide potent crime prevention efforts, and law enforcement personnel are rarely given the resources to implement effective crime prevention strategies among populations that have yet to commit a crime ( Dunworth et al., 1999 ; Spoth et al., 2004 ).

Developmental crime prevention programs delivered without appropriate levels of infrastructure and capacity not only are at risk for failing but also clutter a crowded marketplace. They contribute to a belief that prevention, although it is a nice idea, has weak effects at best ( Caulkins, Pacula, Paddock, and Chiesa, 2004 ; Spence and Shortt, 2007 ). In reality, developmental prevention programs that have been delivered with fidelity and have received adequate resources are not only effective but also cost effective ( Barnett and Masse, 2007 ; Dino, Horn, Abdulkadri, Kalsekar, and Branstetter, 2008 ; Foster, Jones, and the Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, 2006 ; Guyll et al., 2011 ; Kuklinski et al., 2012 ; Reynolds et al., 2011 ). Also, these programs face the same loss of potency that many effective medical interventions experience when delivered in parts of the world without the requisite infrastructure (electricity and refrigeration) and capacity (medical knowledge and reliable staff; Woolf, 2005 ). The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s work with disseminating malaria vaccines is a clear example of the value of local infrastructure and capacity ( Litzow and Bauchner, 2006 ).

Although Manning et al.’s (2013) work focuses on how to value prevention programs, researchers and policy makers alike must ask: What does an effective infrastructure for crime prevention programs look like, and what will it cost? The reality of investing in human development means that effective and efficient prevention efforts cannot succeed in environments with unstable or mismanaged funding streams ( Johnson, Hays, Center, and Daley, 2004 ; Scheirer and Dearing, 2011 ). To build efficient prevention efforts, investments also must support building local infrastructure and developing sustainable efforts with diverse funding streams that, when possible, recapture downstream savings for reinvestment ( Catalano, 2007 ; Crowley et al., 2012 ). To accomplish this goal, first researchers will need to provide a clear estimate of these costs.

Investing Across Ecological Systems: The Case for Dual Generation

As described by Manning et al. (2013) , the economic benefits of developmentally based prevention programs for crime and health are notoriously difficult to monetize ( Karoly, 2008 ). Numerous barriers are holding the field back in this area, but the primary obstacle stems from the difficulty in linking outcomes in childhood to future economic impact ( Crowley et al., 2013 ; Karoly, 2011 ). Early delinquency often occurs initially within the home and then in primary school where costs are low and difficult to quantify (likely in the form of lost parent or teacher productivity; Karoly, 2008 ; Karoly et al., 1998 ). These costs often are only apparent for the severest youth—until adolescence—when the rate of and harm from delinquent behavior grows exponentially ( Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, 1992 ; Foster and Jones, 2007 ). Furthermore, the greatest economic impacts from criminal activity tend not to become manifest until youth enter the labor force or the criminal justice system ( Bongers, Koot, van der Ende, and Verhulst, 2004 ; Cohen, Piquero, and Jennings, 2010 ; Hao and Woo, 2012 ; Heckman et al., 2010 ). Consequently, the delayed benefits to youth from prevention programs makes investing in new developmental efforts difficult not only from a budgetary standpoint but also from a political one ( Welsh and Farrington, 2012 ). Interestingly, some forms of developmental crime prevention programs seek to target not only youth but also their families ( St. Pierre, Layzer, and Barnes, 1995 ). Growing out of ecological systems theory, which holds that human development is impacted by several environmental systems, researchers have found these “dual-generation” approaches could result not only in long-term savings from youth benefits but also in more immediate economic and fiscal savings from parent benefits ( Bronfenbrenner, 1986 ; Miller, 2013 ; Sommer et al., 2012 ).

In practice, dual-generation approaches comprise efforts that combine high-quality early education programs for youth with opportunities for parents to participate in workforce development and parent training programs ( Foundation for Child Development, 2012 ). In this manner, benefits accrue not only in the long term for youth but also in the near term for parents. In turn, these improved parent outcomes augment developmental gains from early education programs (e.g., socioeconomic, health, and parenting; Yoshikawa, Aber, and Beardslee, 2012 ). One commonly cited example is the Nurse Family Partnership program. In this program, public savings accrue not only from children when they reach adolescence (greater than 25% reduction in arrest between 12 and 15 years of age) but also beginning directly after delivery from parents (more than $8,000 in additional tax revenue in 2013 dollars, 33% reduction in welfare use; Karoly et al., 1998 ; Miller, 2013 ). Importantly, Manning et al. (2013) found similar support for dual-generation approaches using the AHP method, where programs that deliver preventive services in preschool and incorporate family interventions were the most preferred option.

In this manner, dual-generation approaches can make developmental crime prevention programs more appealing to decision makers seeking to demonstrate the value of their investments in the near term. Furthermore, knowing that a sizable proportion of a crime prevention program’s return will occur within the first few years after the initial investment can buffer its impact on tight government budgets. Therefore, this knowledge leads us to two innovative approaches for investing in and sustaining developmental crime prevention programs: prevention portfolios and social impact bonds.

Hedging Our Bets: Building Prevention Portfolios and the Promise of Social Impact Bonds

Global austerity efforts have forced policy makers to both cut services and avoid investing in programs that carry even a relatively low risk of failure. In response, many policy makers across the political spectrum desire robust estimates of a program’s potential benefits and costs before they are willing to support new policies ( The Pew Charitable Trusts, 2012 ). In response, innovative approaches for funding new programs and lowering risk to the taxpayer are gaining traction.

One such approach is the development of investment portfolios comprised of many prevention programs. These portfolios offer policy makers a variety of programs with different returns-on-investment (ROIs) and different levels of risk ( Aos et al., 2004 , 2011 ; Drake, Aos, and Miller, 2009 ; Lee et al., 2012 ). In this manner, policy makers can make explicit asset allocation decisions for each program in the portfolio. One example of such an approach comes from the Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP). To build these profiles, WSIPP has conducted large-scale meta-analyses to develop high-quality estimates of programs’ potential ROI and has engaged in sophisticated work modeling the risk of a program failing to produce expected savings. Like traditional financial portfolios, this approach distributes risk across different areas (e.g., primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention) to protect the principal investment. WSIPP has delivered these estimates to the legislature over the years and has increased state investment in prevention dramatically ( Dueffert, 2012 ). As a result, the state has observed meaningful declines in crime and incarceration—to the extent it avoided planned prison construction. The success of this model was the inspiration behind the Results First Initiative described previously and is being replicated across many U.S. states and internationally ( Dueffert, 2013 ).

In contrast to the portfolio approach that relies on public investment in developmentally based prevention, there is growing interest by many governments in offering the private sector incentives to invest in social welfare programs. One strategy that is gaining increasing support is known as a “social impact bond” (also known as a “social benefit bond,” “social policy bond,” or “pay-for-success bond”). These bonds are offered by governments to private investors to support prevention programs known to have a high ROI ( Horesh, 2000 ; Liebman, 2013 ; Liebman and Sellman, 2013 ). The program is delivered by an intermediary supported by the private investors’ funds. If the program is successful in delivering public savings, then the private investors receive both their principal investment and a predefined return (similar to a structured product or equity investment). The first social impact bond was developed by Social Finance UK in 2010. Since then, Australia and the United States have both observed offerings of social impact bonds (e.g., Massachusetts, New York City, and New South Wales). These trials are being closely watched for evidence that this new funding mechanism could be effectively used to support and incentivize efficient developmentally based crime prevention efforts.

Conclusions

Manning et al.’s (2013) valuation approach allows for a systematic comparison of developmental crime prevention programs and has the potential to fill a major gap in current efforts to value prevention for informing public policy. By further considering the economics of investing in developmental crime prevention programs, we can identify multiple actionable steps for research and policy. Combined, they offer the opportunity to build more efficient crime prevention efforts that will lead to substantial future savings. These steps are as follows:

Replicate Manning et al.’s valuation approach (a) in new settings, (b) with new populations, and (c) with a broader array of crime prevention programs.
Develop robust estimates of the costs from implementing and scaling developmental crime prevention programs.
Invest in dual-generation interventions that deliver prevention programs to both youth and their families.
Engage innovative mechanisms for investing in crime prevention efforts, including the development of prevention portfolios and social impact bonds.

In this context, policy makers wishing to install effective and efficient developmental crime programs into current crime prevention and control efforts should consider the utility of Manning et al.’s (2013) AHP approach and encourage replication of the process among their peers. Furthermore, policy makers should carefully consider the available programming infrastructure and capacity in target areas, the use of dual-generation programs, and innovative investment strategies that protect public resources from risk.

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the feedback from Dr. Ken Dodge, Center for Child and Family Policy, Duke University, and Dr. Philip Cook, Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University.

D. Max Crowley is a National Institute of Drug Abuse Fellow at Duke University’s Center for Child and Family Policy studying the economics of investing in human development. His research program seeks to prevent the development of health inequalities and criminal behavior through evidence-based investments in childhood and adolescence. Dr. Crowley co-chairs the Society for Prevention Research’s MAPS Taskforce on economic analyses of prevention, is a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER-Crime), and winner of the Research Society on Alcoholism’s John T. and Patricia A. O’Neill Addiction Science Education Award. His work has been supported by the National Institute of Drug Abuse, NoVo Foundation, ACF’s Office of Research, Planning and Evaluation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Andréasson Sven, Hjalmarsson Kerstin, Rehnman Charlotta. Implementation and dissemination of methods for prevention of alcohol problems in primary health care: A feasibility study. Alcohol and Alcoholism. 2000; 35 :525–530. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Andrews Don A, Bonta James. Rehabilitating criminal justice policy and practice. Psychology, Public Policy and Law. 2010; 16 :39–55. [ Google Scholar ]
Aos Steve, Lee Stephanie, Drake Elizabeth K, Pennucci Annie, Klima Tali, Miller Marna G, et al. Return on Investment: Evidence-Based Options to Improve Statewide Outcomes. Olympia: Washington State Institute for Public Policy; 2011. Retrieved from wsipp.wa.gov/pub.asp?docid=11-07-1201 . [ Google Scholar ]
Aos Steve, Lieb Roxanne, Mayfield Jim, Miller Marna G, Pennucci Annie. Benefits and Costs of Prevention and Early Intervention Programs for Youth. Olympia: Washington State Institute for Public Policy; 2004. Retrieved from wsipp.wa.gov/pub.asp?docid=04-07-3901 . [ Google Scholar ]
Artello Kristine. Shifting “tough on crime” to keeping kids out of jail: Exploring organizational adaptability and sustainability at a mental health agency serving adjudicated children living with severe mental illness. Criminal Justice Policy Review. 2013 doi: 10.1177/0887403412473473. E-pub ahead of print. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Barnett W Steven, Masse Leonard N. Comparative benefit–cost analysis of the Abecedarian program and its policy implications. Economics of Education Review. 2007; 26 :113–125. [ Google Scholar ]
Becker Gary S. Crime and punishment: An economic approach. Journal of Political Economy. 1968; 76 :169–217. [ Google Scholar ]
Birch Stephen, Gafni Amiram. Cost effectiveness/utility analyses: Do current decision rules lead us to where we want to be? Journal of Health Economics. 1992; 11 :279–296. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Bongers Ilja L, Koot Hans M, van der Ende Jan, Verhulst Frank C. Developmental trajectories of externalizing behaviors in childhood and adolescence. Child Development. 2004; 75 :1523–1537. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Braga Anthony A, Weisburd David L. The effects of focused deterrence strategies on crime: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the empirical evidence. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency. 2011; 49 :323–358. [ Google Scholar ]
Bronfenbrenner Urie. Ecology of the family as a context for human development: Research perspectives. Developmental Psychology. 1986; 22 :723–742. [ Google Scholar ]
Brookshire David S, Crocker Thomas D. The advantages of contingent valuation methods for benefit-cost analysis. Public Choice. 1981; 36 :235–252. Retrieved March 15, 2011 from jstor.org/stable/30023439 . [ Google Scholar ]
Cameron Samuel. The economics of crime deterrence: A survey of theory and evidence. Kyklos. 1988; 41 :301–323. [ Google Scholar ]
Catalano Richard F. Prevention is a sound public and private investment. Criminology & Public Policy. 2007; 6 :377–397. [ Google Scholar ]
Caulkins Jonathan P, Pacula Rosalie Liccardo, Paddock Susan, Chiesa James. What we can—and cannot—expect from school-based drug prevention. Drug and Alcohol Review. 2004; 23 :79–87. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Cohen Mark A. Pain, suffering, and jury awards: A study of the cost of crime to victims. Law & Society Review. 1988; 22 :537–556. [ Google Scholar ]
Cohen Mark A. The Costs of Crime and Justice. London, U.K: Routledge; 2005. [ Google Scholar ]
Cohen Mark A, Piquero Alex R, Jennings Wesley G. Studying the costs of crime across offender trajectories. Criminology & Public Policy. 2010; 9 :279–305. [ Google Scholar ]
Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. A developmental and clinical model for the prevention of conduct disorders. Development and Psychopathology. 1992; 4 :509–527. [ Google Scholar ]
Crowley D Max, Hill Laura Griner, Kuklinski Margaret R, Jones Damon E. Research priorities for economic analyses of prevention: Current issues & future directions. Prevention Science. 2013 doi: 10.1007/s11121-013-0429-z. E-pub ahead of print. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Crowley D Max, Jones Damon E, Greenberg Mark T, Feinberg Mark E, Spoth Richard L. Resource consumption of a diffusion model for prevention programs: The PROSPER delivery system. Journal of Adolescent Health. 2012; 50 :256–263. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Dino Geri, Horn Kimberly, Abdulkadri Abdullahi, Kalsekar Iftekhar, Branstetter Steven. Cost-effectiveness analysis of the Not on Tobacco program for adolescent smoking cessation. Prevention Science. 2008; 9 (1):38–46. doi: 10.1007/s11121-008-0082-0. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Dodge Kenneth A. The science of youth violence prevention. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. 2001; 20 :63–70. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Donaldson Cam, Birch Stephen, Gafni Amiram. The distribution problem in economic evaluation: Income and the valuation of costs and consequences of health care programmes. Health Economics. 2002; 11 :55–70. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Donaldson Cam, Farrar Shelley, Mapp Tracy, Walker Andrew, Macphee Susan. Assessing community values in health care: Is the “willingness to pay” method feasible? Health Care Analysis. 1997; 5 :7–29. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Drake Elizabeth K, Aos Steve, Miller Marna G. Evidence-based public policy options to reduce crime and criminal justice costs: Implications in Washington State. Victims & Offenders. 2009; 4 :170–196. [ Google Scholar ]
Dueffert Nicole. Better Results, Lower Costs: Washington State’s Cutting-Edge Policy Analysis Model. Washington, DC: The Pew Center on the States; 2012. Retrieved from pewstates.org/uploadedFiles/PCS_Assets/2012/ResultsFirst_Washington_casestudy.pdf . [ Google Scholar ]
Dueffert Nicole. Pew-Macarthur Results First Initiative. Washington, DC: The Pew Center on the States; 2013. States’ Use of Cost-Benefit Analysis: Improving Results for Taxpayers. Retrieved from pewstates.org/uploadedFiles/PCS_Assets/2013/Pew_Results_First_50state_report.pdf . [ Google Scholar ]
Dunworth Terence, Mills Gregory, Cordner Gary, Greene Jack. National Evaluation of Weed and Seed Cross-Site Analysis. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice; 1999. Retrieved from ncjrs.gov/txtfiles1/176358.txt . [ Google Scholar ]
Durlak Joseph A. Common risk and protective factors in successful prevention programs. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. 1998; 68 :512–520. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Eckenrode John, Campa Mary, Luckey Dennis W, Henderson Charles R, Jr, Cole Robert, Kitzman Harriet, et al. Long-term effects of prenatal and infancy nurse home visitation on the life course of youths: 19-year follow-up of a randomized trial. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. 2010; 164 :9–15. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Farrington David P. Early developmental prevention of juvenile delinquency. RSA Journal. 1994; 142 :22–34. [ Google Scholar ]
Farrington David P. Saving Children from a Life of Crime: The Benefits Greatly Outweigh the Costs!. Presented at the Stockholm Price in Criminology; Stockholm, Sweden. 2013. Retrieved from criminologysymposium.com . [ Google Scholar ]
Foster E Michael, Jones Damon E. The economic analysis of prevention: An illustration involving children’s behavior problems. The Journal of Mental Health Policy and Economics. 2007; 10 :165–175. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Foster EM, Jones D the Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. Can a costly intervention be cost-effective?: An analysis of violence prevention. Archives of General Psychiatry. 2006; 63 :1284–1291. doi: 10.1001/archpsyc.63.11.1284. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Foundation for Child Development. Investing in Public Programs Matters: How State Policies Impact Children’s Lives. New York: Author; 2012. Retrieved from resourcecentre.savethechildren.se/sites/default/files/documents/5551.pdf . [ Google Scholar ]
Gifford-Smith Mary, Dodge Kenneth A, Dishion Thomas J, McCord Joan. Peer influence in children and adolescents: Crossing the bridge from developmental to intervention science. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology. 2005; 33 :255–265. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Guyll Max, Spoth Richard L, Crowley Daniel Max. Economic analysis of methamphetamine prevention effects and employer costs. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. 2011; 72 :577–585. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Hao Lingxin, Woo Han S. Distinct trajectories in the transition to adulthood: Are children of immigrants advantaged? Child Development. 2012; 83 :1623–1639. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Hawkins J David, Catalano Richard F, Arthur Michael W, Egan Elizabeth, Brown Eric C, Abbott Robert D, et al. Testing communities that care: The rationale, design and behavioral baseline equivalence of the community youth development study. Prevention Science. 2008; 9 :178–190. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Hawkins J David, Catalano Richard F, Miller Janet Y. Risk and protective factors for alcohol and other drug problems in adolescence and early adulthood: Implications for substance abuse prevention. Psychological Bulletin. 1992; 112 :64–105. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Hawkins J David, Weis Joseph G. The social development model: An integrated approach to delinquency prevention. The Journal of Primary Prevention. 1985; 6 :73–97. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Heckman James J. Skill formation and the economics of investing in disadvantaged children. Science. 2006; 312 :1900–1902. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Heckman James J, Moon Seong Hyeok, Pinto Rodrigo, Savelyev Peter A, Yavitz Adam. The rate of return to the High Scope Perry Preschool Program. Journal of Public Economics. 2010; 94 :114–128. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Homel Ross. Developmental crime prevention. In: Tilley Nick., editor. Handbook of Crime Prevention Community Safety. London, U.K: Routledge; 2013. [ Google Scholar ]
Horesh Ronnie. Injecting incentives into the solution of social problems: Social policy bonds. Economic Affairs. 2000; 20 :39–42. [ Google Scholar ]
Johnson Knowlton, Hays Carol, Center Hayden, Daley Charlotte. Building capacity and sustainable prevention innovations: A sustainability planning model. Evaluation and Program Planning. 2004; 27 :135–149. [ Google Scholar ]
Karoly Lynn A. Technical Report. Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation; 2008. Valuing Benefits in Benefit-Cost Studies of Social Programs. Retrieved from rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/technical_reports/2008/RAND_TR643.pdf . [ Google Scholar ]
Karoly Lynn A. Toward standardization of benefit-cost analyses of early childhood interventions. SSRN Electronic Journal 2011 [ Google Scholar ]
Karoly Lynn A, Greenwood Peter W, Everingham Susan S, Houbé Jill, Rebecca Kilburn M, Peter Rydell C, et al. Investing in Our Children: What We Know and Don’t Know About the Costs and Benefits of Early Childhood Interventions. Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation; 1998. [ Google Scholar ]
Kelly Michael, Morgan Antony, Ellis Simon, Younger Tricia, Huntley Jane, Swann Catherine. Evidence based public health: A review of the experience of the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) of developing public health guidance in England. Social Science & Medicine. 2010; 71 :1056–1062. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Klietz Stephanie J, Borduin Charles M, Schaeffer Cindy M. Cost-benefit analysis of multisystemic therapy with serious and violent juvenile offenders. Journal of Family Psychology. 2010; 24 :657–666. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Kuklinski Margaret R, Briney John S, David Hawkins J, Catalano Richard F. Cost-benefit analysis of Communities That Care outcomes at eighth grade. Prevention Science. 2012; 13 :150–161. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Lee Stephanie, Aos Steve, Drake Elizabeth K, Pennucci Annie, Miller Marna G, Anderson Laurie. Return on Investment: Evidence-Based Options to Improve Statewide Outcomes April 2012 Update. Olympia: Washington State Institute for Public Policy; 2012. Retrieved from wsipp.wa.gov/pub.asp?docid=12-04-1201 . [ Google Scholar ]
Lerner Richard M, Lerner Jacqueline V, Almerigi Jason B, Theokas Christina, Phelps Erin, Gestsdottir Steinunn, et al. Positive youth development, participation in community youth development programs, and community contributions of fifthgrade adolescents: Findings from the first wave of the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development. The Journal of Early Adolescence. 2005; 25 :17–71. [ Google Scholar ]
Liebman Jeffrey B. Building on Recent Advances in Evidence-Based Policymaking. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution; 2013. [ Google Scholar ]
Liebman Jeffrey B, Sellman Alina. Social Impact Bonds: A Guide for State and Local Governments. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Kennedy School Social Impact Bond Technical Assistance Lab; 2013. [ Google Scholar ]
Litzow Jennifer M, Bauchner Howard. The grand challenges of the Gates Foundation: What impact on global child health? Journal of the Royal Society on Medicine. 2006; 99 :171–174. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Ludwig Jens. The costs of crime. Criminology & Public Policy. 2010; 9 :307–311. [ Google Scholar ]
Ludwig Jens, Cook Philip J. The benefits of reducing gun violence: Evidence from contingent-valuation survey data. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty. 2001; 22 :207–226. [ Google Scholar ]
Manning Matthew, Smith Christine, Homel Ross. Valuing developmental crime prevention. Criminology & Public Policy. 2013; 12 :305–332. [ Google Scholar ]
Marsh Kevin, Chalfin Aaron, Roman John K. What does cost-benefit analysis add to decision making? Evidence from the criminal justice literature. Journal of Experimental Criminology. 2008; 4 :117–135. [ Google Scholar ]
McCollister Kathryn E, French Michael T, Fang Hai. The cost of crime to society: New crime-specific estimates for policy and program evaluation. Drug and Alcohol Dependence. 2010; 108 :98–109. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Miller Ted R. Nurse-Family Partnership Home Visitation: Costs, Outcomes, and Return on Investment. Bethesda, MD: HBSA Inc; 2013. Retrieved from pewstates.org/uploadedFiles/PCS_Assets/2013/Costs_and_ROI_report.pdf . [ Google Scholar ]
Miller Ted R, Cohen Mark A, Rossman Shelli B. Victim costs of violent crime and resulting injuries. Health Affairs. 1993; 12 :186–197. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
O’Connell Mary Ellen, Boat Thomas F, Warner Kenneth E. Preventing Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders Among Young People: Progress and Possibilities. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 2009. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Office of Management & Budget (OMB) Guidelines and Discount Rates for Benefit-Cost Analysis of Federal Programs. A-94. Washington, DC: Author; 1992. Retrieved from whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/a94/a094.pdf . [ Google Scholar ]
Olsen Jan Abel, Smith Richard D. Theory versus practice: A review of “willingness-to-pay” in health and health care. Health Economics. 2001; 10 :39–52. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Osgood D Wayne. Making sense of crime and the life course. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 2005; 602 :196–211. [ Google Scholar ]
Paternoster Raymond. How much do we really know about criminal deterrence? Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. 2010; 100 :765–823. [ Google Scholar ]
Reynolds Arthur J, Temple Judy A, White Barry AB, Ou SuhRuu, Robertson Dylan L. Age 26 cost-benefit analysis of the Child-Parent Center Early Education Program. Child Development. 2011; 82 :379–404. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Rikard RV, Rosenberg ED. Aging inmates: A convergence of trends in the American criminal justice system. Journal of Correctional Health Care. 2007; 13 :150–162. [ Google Scholar ]
Ringwalt Christopher L, Ennett Susan T, Vincus Amy A, Thorne Judy, Rohrbach Louise Ann, Ashley Simmons-Rudolph A. The prevalence of effective substance use prevention curricula in U.S. middle schools. Prevention Science. 2002; 3 :257–265. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Ryan Mandy, Watson Verity. Comparing welfare estimates from payment card contingent valuation and discrete choice experiments. Health Economics. 2009; 18 :389–401. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Saaty Thomas L. What is the analytic hierarchy process. In: Mitra Gautam., editor. Mathematical Models and Decision Support. Berlin, Germany: Springer; 1988. [ Google Scholar ]
Scheirer MaryAnn, Dearing James W. An agenda for research on the sustainability of public health programs. American Journal of Public Health. 2011; 101 :2059–2067. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Sommer Teresa Eckrich, Lindsay Chaise-Lansdale P, Brooks-Gunn Jeanne, Gardner Margo, Rauner Diana Mendley, Freel Karen. Early childhood education centers and mothers’ postsecondary attainment: A new conceptual framework for a dual-generation education intervention. Teachers College Record. 2012; 114 :1–40. [ Google Scholar ]
Spence Susan H, Shortt Alison L. Research review: Can we justify the widespread dissemination of universal, school-based interventions for the prevention of depression among children and adolescents? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 2007; 48 :526–542. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Spoth Richard L, Greenberg Mark T. Impact challenges in community science-with-practice: Lessons from PROSPER on transformative practitioner-scientist partnerships and prevention infrastructure development. American Journal of Community Psychology. 2011; 48 :106–119. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Spoth Richard L, Greenberg Mark T, Bierman Karen, Redmond Cleve. PROSPER community–university partnership model for public education systems: Capacity-building for evidence-based, competence-building prevention. Prevention Science. 2004; 5 :31–39. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
St Pierre Robert G, Layzer Jean I, Barnes Helen V. Two-generation programs: Design, cost, and short-term effectiveness. The Future of Children. 1995; 5 :76–93. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
The Pew Charitable Trusts. Results First Initiative [homepage] 2012 Retrieved from pewstates.org/projects/results-first-328069 .
Vitiello Michael. Still between a rock and a hard place: Sentencing reform in California. Federal Sentencing Reporter. 2013; 25 :233–235. [ Google Scholar ]
Weatherly H, Drummond M, Claxton K, Cookson K, Ferguson B, Godfrey C, et al. Methods for assessing the cost-effectiveness of public health interventions: Key challenges and recommendations. Health Policy. 2009; 93 :85–92. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Weinstein Milton C, Manning Willard G., Jr Theoretical issues in cost-effectiveness analysis. Journal of Health Economics. 1997; 16 :121–128. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Welsh Brandon C, Farrington David P. The Future of Crime Prevention: Developmental and Situational Strategies. Bethesda, MD: National Institute of Justice; 2010. [ Google Scholar ]
Welsh Brandon C, Farrington David P. Science, politics, and crime prevention: Toward a new crime policy. Journal of Criminal Justice. 2012; 40 :128–133. [ Google Scholar ]
Welsh Brandon C, Sullivan Christopher J, Olds David L. When early crime prevention goes to scale: A new look at the evidence. Prevention Science. 2009; 11 :115–125. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Woolf Steven H. The break-even point: When medical advances are less important than improving the fidelity with which they are delivered. The Annals of Family Medicine. 2005; 3 :545–552. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Yoshikawa Hirokazu, Lawrence Aber J, Beardslee William R. The effects of poverty on the mental, emotional, and behavioral health of children and youth: Implications for prevention. American Psychologist. 2012; 67 :272–284. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Zarkin Gary A, Cates Sheryl C, Bala Mohan V. Estimating the willingness to pay for drug abuse treatment: A pilot study. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment. 2000; 18 :149–159. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]

The Palgrave Handbook of Australian and New Zealand Criminology, Crime and Justice pp 815–829 Cite as

Developmental Prevention
Ross Homel 3 &
Kate Freiberg 3
First Online: 05 November 2017

10k Accesses

1 Citations

This chapter provides an overview of developmental or early prevention strategies for crime, antisocial behaviour, and violence in Australia, New Zealand, and internationally, and discusses their effectiveness and potential to be implemented on a large scale in a sustainable fashion. Three flagship programmes are described in detail: the Perry Preschool programme, the Nurse-Family Partnership home visiting programme, and the Communities That Care programme. The need for new forms of evidence is emphasised, as well as the need for innovative, large-scale, and sustained prevention strategies through enhanced prevention delivery systems.

Communities That Care (CTC)
Contraceptive Delivery Systems
Perry Preschool Program
Nurse Family Partnership (NFP)

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution .

Buying options

Available as PDF
Read on any device
Instant download
Own it forever
Available as EPUB and PDF
Compact, lightweight edition
Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
Free shipping worldwide - see info
Durable hardcover edition

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

AIHW. 2016. Youth Justice in Australia 2014–15. Cat. no. AUS198. Canberra: AIHW.

Google Scholar

Australian Social Inclusion Board. 2011. Breaking Cycles of Disadvantage . Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia.

Blueprints. 2016. About us. http://www.blueprintsprograms.com/about . Accessed 30 May.

Commission on Social Determinants of Health. 2008. Closing the Gap in a Generation: Health Equity Through Action on the Social Determinants of Health Final Report of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health . Geneva: WHO.

Cullen, Francis T. 1994. Social Support as an Organizing Concept for Criminology: Presidential Address to the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. Justice Quarterly 11: 527–559.

Article Google Scholar

Department of Health and Ageing. 2012. Stage 1 Evaluation of the Australian Nurse Family Partnership Program, Final Report . Canberra: Ernst & Young Australia.

Developmental Crime Prevention Consortium. 1999. Pathways to Prevention: Developmental and Early Intervention Approaches to Crime in Australia . Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service.

Dodge, Kenneth A., and Sandra N. McCourt. 2010. Translating Models of Antisocial Behavioral Development Into Efficacious Intervention Policy to Prevent Adolescent Violence. Developmental Psychobiology 52: 277–285.

Eckenrode, John, Mary Campa, Dennis W. Luckey, Charles R. Henderson, Robert Cole, Harriet Kitzman, Elizabeth Anson, Kimberly Sidora-Arcoleo, Jane Powers, and David Olds. 2010. Long Term Effects of Prenatal and Infancy Nurse Home Visitation on the Life Course of Youths: 19 Year Follow-Up of a Randomized Trial. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 164 (1): 9–15.

Farrington, David P. 2007. Childhood Risk Factors and Risk-Focussed Prevention. In The Oxford Handbook of Criminology , eds. Mike Maguire, Rod Morgan, and Robert Reiner, 602–640. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Feinberg, Mark E., Jones Damon, Mark T. Greenberg, D. Wayne Osgood, and Daniel Bontempo. 2010. Effects of the Communities That Care Model in Pennsylvania on Change in Adolescent Risk and Problem Behaviors. Prevention Science 11: 163–171.

Flaspohler, Paul, Jennifer Duffy, Abraham Wandersman, Lindsey Stillman, and Melissa A. Maras. 2008. Unpacking Prevention Capacity: An Intersection of Research-to-Practice Models and Community-Centered Models. American Journal of Community Psychology 41: 182–196.

Fletcher, Al, and Cheryl Jorgensen. 2006. Brutal: Surviving Westbrook Boys Home . Sydney: New Holland Publishers.

France, Alan, Kate Freiberg, and Ross Homel. 2010. Beyond Risk Factors: Towards a Holistic Prevention Paradigm for Children and Young People. British Journal of Social Work 40 (4): 1192–1210.

France, Alan, and Ross Homel. 2006. Societal Access Routes and Developmental Pathways: Putting Social Structure and Young People’s Voice into the Analysis Pathways into and out of Crime. Australian and New Zealand of Criminology 39 (3): 287–294.

Freiberg, Kate, Ross Homel, and Sara Branch. 2014. The Parent Empowerment and Efficacy Measure (PEEM): A Tool for Strengthening the Accountability and Effectiveness of Family Support Services. Australian Social Work 67 (3): 405–418.

Glaser, Renita R., M. Lee Van Horn, Michael W. Arthur, J. David Hawkins, and Richard F. Catalano. 2005. Measurement Properties of the Communities That Care Youth Survey Across Demographic Groups. Journal of Quantitative Criminology 21 (1): 73–102.

Goddard, Tim, and Randolph R. Myers. 2016. Against Evidence-Based Oppression: Marginalized Youth and the Politics of Risk-Based Assessment and Intervention. Theoretical Criminology . doi: 10.1177/1362480616645172 .

Hawkins, J. David, and Richard F. Catalano. 1992. Communities That Care: Action for Drug Abuse Prevention . San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Hawkins, J. David, Sabrina Oesterle, Eric C. Brown, Robert D. Abbott, and Richard F. Catalano. 2014. Youth Problem Behaviors 8 Years After Implementing the Communities That Care Prevention System: A Community-Randomized Trial. Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics 168 (2): 122–129.

Hawkins, J. David, Sabrina Oesterle, Eric C. Brown, Michael W. Arthur, Robert D. Abbott, Abigail A. Fagan, and Richard F. Catalano. 2009. Results of a Type 2 Translational Research Trial to Prevent Adolescent Drug Use and Delinquency: A Test of Communities That Care. Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine 163 (9): 789–798.

Heckman, James, Rodrigo Pinto, and Peter Savelyev. 2013. Understanding the Mechanisms Through Which an Influential Early Childhood Program Boosted Adult Outcomes. American Economic Review 103 (6): 2052–2086.

Homel‚ Ross‚ Brian Bumbarger‚ Kate Freiberg‚ and Sara Branch. 2017. Sustaining Crime Prevention at Scale: Transforming Delivery Systems Through Prevention Science. In Preventing Crime and Violence: Volume 3 of Advances in Prevention Science ‚ eds. Brent Teasdale and Mindy S. Bradley, chapter 29 (pp. 351–376). New York: Springer.

Homel, Ross, Kate Freiberg, and Sara Branch. 2015a. CREATE-ing Capacity to Take Developmental Crime Prevention to Scale: A Community-Based Approach within a National Framework. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 48 (3): 367–385.

Homel, Ross, Kate Freiberg, Sara Branch, and Huong Le. 2015b. Preventing the Onset of Youth Offending: The Impact of the Pathways to Prevention Project on Child Behaviour and Wellbeing . Canberra: AIC.

Homel, Ross, Kate Freiberg, Cherie Lamb, Marie Leech, Anne Hampshire, Ian Hay, Gordon Elias, Angela Carr, Matthew Manning, Rosie Teague, and Samantha Batchelor. 2006. The Pathways to Prevention Project: The First Five Years, 1999–2004 . Sydney: Griffith University & Mission Australia.

Homel, Ross, and Tara R. McGee. 2012. Community Approaches to Crime and Violence Prevention: Building Prevention Capacity. In The Future of Criminology , eds. Rolf Loeber, and Brandon Welsh, 172–177. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Homel, Ross, and Lisa Thomsen. Forthcoming. Developmental Crime Prevention. In Handbook of Crime Prevention and Community Safety, 2nd edition, eds. Nick Tilley and Aiden Sidebottom. London: Taylor & Francis.

Inter-Agency Commission. 1990. World Declaration on Education for All and Framework for Action to Meet Basic Learning Needs . New York, NY: Inter-Agency Commission for the World Conference on Education for All.

Kemp, Lynn, Elizabeth Harris, Catherine McMahon, Stephen Matthey, Graham Vimpani, Teresa Anderson, Virginia Schmied, Henna Aslam, and Siggi Zapart. 2011. Child and Family Outcomes of a Long-Term Nurse Home Visitation Programme: A Randomised Controlled Trial. Archive of Diseases in Childhood 96: 533–540.

Lerner, Richard M., and Willis F. Overton. 2008. Exemplifying the Integrations of the Relational Developmental System: Synthesizing Theory, Research, and Application to Promote Positive Development and Social Justice. Journal of Adolescent Research 23: 245–255.

Lynch, John. 2016. Do We Believe in Magic? What Can Early Interventions Achieve in 21st Century Australia? and How Will We Know? Paper presented at Australian Institute of Family Studies Conference, July 6–8, in Melbourne.

Manning, Matthew, Ross Homel, and Christine Smith. 2010. A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Early Developmental Prevention Programs in At-Risk Populations on Non-Health Outcomes in Adolescence. Children and Youth Services Review 32: 506–519.

Mihalic, Sharon F., and Delbert S. Elliott. 2015. Evidence-Based Programs Registry: Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development. Evaluation and Program Planning 48: 124–131.

Olds, David. 2007. Preventing Crime with Prenatal and Infancy Support of Parents. Victims and Offenders 2 (2): 205–225.

Olds, David. 2016. Building Evidence to Improve Maternal and Child Health. The Lancet 387: 105–107.

Olds, David, Lisa M. Pettitt, JoAnn Robinson, Charles Henderson, John Eckenrode, Harriet Kitzman, Bob Cole, and Jane Powers. 1998. Reducing Risks for Antisocial Behavior with a Program of Prenatal and Early Childhood Home Visitation. Journal of Community Psychology 26 (1): 65–83.

Piquero, Alex R., Wesley G. Jennings, Brie Diamond, David P. Farrington, Richard E. Tremblay, Brandon C. Welsh, and Jennifer M. Reingle Gonzalez. 2016. A Meta-Analysis Update on the Effects of Early Family/Parent Training Programs on Antisocial Behavior and Delinquency. Journal of Experimental Criminology 12: 229–248.

Robling, Michael, Marie-Jet Bekkers, Kerry Bell, Christopher C. Butler, Rebecca Cannings-John, and Sue Channon. 2016. Effectiveness of a Nurse-Led Intensive Home-Visitation Programme for First-Time Teenage Mothers (Building Blocks): A Pragmatic Randomised Controlled Trial. Lancet 387: 146–155.

Schweinhart, Lawrence J. 2013. Long-Term Follow-Up of a Preschool Experiment. Journal of Experimental Criminology 9: 389–409.

Shonkoff‚ Jack P.‚ and Philip A. Fisher. 2013. Rethinking evidence-based practice and two-generation programs to create the future of early childhood policy. Development and Psychopathology ‚ 25‚ 1635–1653.

Shonkoff, Jack P., Linda Richter, Jacques van der Gaag, and Zulfiqar A. Bhutta. 2012. An Integrated Scientific Framework for Child Survival and Early Childhood Development. Pediatrics 129 (2): e460–e472.

Sloboda, Zili, and Hanno Petras (eds.). 2014. Defining Prevention Science: Volume 1 of Advances in Prevention Science . New York, NY: Springer.

Toumbourou, John W., Rachael K. Leung, Ross Homel, Kate Freiberg, Lata Satyen, and Sheryl A. Hemphill. 2015. Violence Prevention and Early Intervention: What Works? In Preventing V iolence in Australia: Policy, Practice and Solutions, eds. Andrew Day and Ephrem Fernandez, 45–62. Sydney: Federation Press.

UN. 2010. Millennium Development Goals Report: United Nations Summit on the Millennium Development Goals . New York, NY: UN.

UNESCO. 2000. The Dakar Framework for Action: Education for All: Meeting Our Collective Commitments: Including Six Regional Frameworks for Action . Paris: UNESCO.

Vinson, Tony. 2007. Dropping Off the Edge: The Distribution of Disadvantage in Australia . Melbourne: Jesuit Social Services Australia.

Vinson, Tony, and Ross Homel. 1975. Crime and Disadvantage: The Coincidence of Medical and Social Problems in an Australian City. The British Journal of Criminology 15: 21–31.

Wickes, Rebecca. Forthcoming. Social Disorganization Theory: Its History and Relevance to Crime Prevention. In Preventing Crime and Violence: Volume 3 of Advances in Prevention Science , eds. Brent Teasdale and Mindy S. Bradley. New York, NY: Springer.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Griffith University, Queensland, Australia

Ross Homel & Kate Freiberg

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ross Homel .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand

Antje Deckert

University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter.

Homel, R., Freiberg, K. (2017). Developmental Prevention. In: Deckert, A., Sarre, R. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Australian and New Zealand Criminology, Crime and Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55747-2_54

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55747-2_54

Published : 05 November 2017

Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-319-55746-5

Online ISBN : 978-3-319-55747-2

eBook Packages : Law and Criminology Law and Criminology (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Find a journal
Track your research

Developmental and early intervention approaches to crime prevention

Developmental and early intervention strategies for the reduction and prevention of crime can operate across all three levels of prevention: primary, secondary and tertiary.

Developmental prevention is intervention early in developmental pathways that may lead to the emergence and recurrence of criminal behaviours and other social problems. It does not just mean early in life, although inevitably many of the critical moments for effective intervention will occur during the early years.

Developmental prevention emphasises investment in strategies and programs for creating "child friendly" institutions and communities. It also focuses on the manipulation of multiple risk and protective factors at crucial transition points across a lifetime. Such points can be around birth, the preschool years, the transition from primary to secondary school, and subsequent transitions to higher education, employment, and so on.

In Australia, developmental prevention programs typically cover areas such as parenting and early childhood support, health care assistance and home help, literacy training and alternative learning programs, anti-bullying initiatives in schools, programs addressing violence reduction, self-esteem and self-empowerment development and training, job skills training and development, establishment of theatre and arts groups, sport and youth centres for recreation, and early school-leavers' programs.

The growing interest in developmental and early intervention for the prevention and reduction of crime is mainly driven by two closely related factors:

frustration at the apparent failure of conventional strategies to prevent the long-term growth and recurrence of crime in the community; and
evidence from a small number of well researched and evaluated initiatives which strongly suggest that significant long-term benefits (particularly financial) will accrue from effective developmental and early intervention programs.

The most significant challenge for developmental and early intervention crime prevention remains moving the research evidence into effective everyday programs.

2 Developmental and Life-Course Theories of Offending

Francis T. Cullen is Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus and a Senior Research Associate in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. He is author of Environmental Corrections. His current research focuses on the organization of criminological knowledge and on rehabilitation as a correctional policy. He is a past ↵president of both the American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.

Michael L. Benson, PhD, is Professor of Criminology and Director of the Center for Criminal Justice Research at the University of Cincinnati.

Matthew D. Makarios is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.

Published: 18 September 2012
Cite Icon Cite
Permissions Icon Permissions

Most of the traditional theories of crime only focused on one stage in life, namely the teenage years, because criminologists believed that adolescence was the period when participation in illegal activities increased. This resulted in a wide range of “theories of delinquency” in criminology. This article studies several developmental and life-course theories that help in understanding crime across the lives of people. One of these is Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi's claim that steady criminal behavior across life is caused by low self-control, a characteristic that was established during childhood. Another is the perspective, labeling theory, which warns that efforts to prevent people from offending can lead to an increase in criminality.

Theories perform three useful functions. First, amid the many potential risk factors for crime, they identify which ones are most salient. Second, they delineate the relationships among or sequencing of these criminogenic risk factors. And third, they propose the origins of these risk factors. If true, theories thus enrich our understanding of criminal behavior. But they also carry two limitations—one obvious and one not so obvious. On the one hand, if theories identify risk factors that are either unrelated or only weakly related to crime, they mislead scholars and misguide practitioners’ intervention efforts. On the other hand, there is a less obvious difficulty: even if substantially accurate, theories restrict our vision as to the possible sources of criminal conduct. Similar to a flashlight in the night, theories shine a concentrated light on and thus allow us to see the importance of certain risk factors, but in doing so, they leave other factors in the dark and outside our consideration.

Many traditional theories of crime—those that directed our thinking about crime for the better part of the 20th century—focused their beam primarily on one stage in life: the teenage years. As a result, criminology was replete with a roster of “theories of delinquency.” Scholars pointed their theoretical lights on this stage in life for criminological and practical reasons. Criminologically, adolescence appeared to be a time during which participation in illegal activities skyrocketed. The hump of the bell curve of crime was centered on the teenage years for most offenses (a bit later for serious violent offenses). This was also the point in life at which individuals joined together to form gangs, including those heavily involved in drugs and violence. Practically, youths were easily studied. It was possible to survey most teenagers in a community by distributing questionnaires in junior and senior high schools. By contrast, children were too young to fill out such questionnaires and adults rarely congregated in one place where they might be polled.

This approach—theorizing about and collecting data on teenagers—contributed many important insights to our understanding of crime causation. Even so, it was an approach that left too much about life in the dark—outside what criminologists would see and study. Although criminologists never argued that childhood was irrelevant to crime, they ignored the beginning stages of life and focused their attention on the post-childhood years. Implicitly, their theories assumed that most youngsters arrived at the teenage years as blank slates, at which time they either conformed or were driven, encouraged, or permitted to break the law. After the teenage years, it was assumed, again mostly in unspoken terms, that those in trouble as adults would be drawn from those in trouble as juveniles. Little direct investigation was undertaken of the unique aspects of adulthood that might encourage or discourage criminal involvement.

Beginning in the 1990s, however, a relatively small group of scholars questioned the implicit assumptions of mainstream criminology. They pointed out something that most parents worry about: that what happens in childhood—indeed, in the womb—may be a precursor to what comes later in life. That is, risk factors for delinquency may not be limited exclusively to the teenage years. Rather, they might well emerge early in life and, at that time, determine who will grow up to be a serious offender. An even smaller group of scholars looked at the back two-thirds of life—the adult years. They cautioned that what occurs in adulthood is affected by childhood factors and by life events that are unique to being a grown-up.

These simple insights had profound implications. First, they suggested that most existing theories were limited, if not simply incorrect (we use the term “misspecified”).They left out too many important risk factors at other stages of life to provide an accurate and complete understanding of the criminal enterprise. Second, these insights created fresh opportunities for thinking about how to prevent crime. If risk factors for crime were found across the life course, then it made sense that interventions aimed at preventing criminal behavior could be designed for distinct stages of the life course (Farrington and Welsh 2007 ).

Importantly, over the past two decades, theories have emerged to address these issues. These perspectives are like shining two or three flashlights, rather than a single one, so that an entire dark room can be illuminated. Thus, with these newer theories, we can see multiple dimensions of life simultaneously, allowing our criminological eyes to scan the life course from “womb to tomb.” Freed from a narrow focus on the juvenile years, we are able to consider how individuals grow into and out of crime. This opportunity to see broadly, however, has not made our scholarly lives easier. With our field of vision expanded, there is now more to see and more to try to make sense of.

In this regard, the theories discussed in this essay assist in the daunting task of trying to understand crime across people’s lives. Some scholars use the constructs of developmental and life-course as synonyms—that is, to refer to theories that try to explain criminal involvement across life. Other scholars, however, use the terms in a more technical way so as to show how these criminological approaches differ. Thus, in this debate, developmental theories assume that people grow up or “develop” as humans in predictable ways, going through standard stages in life. Most youngsters are on a prosocial or “normal” pathway, but others are not; they are headed into crime. Even here, these youngsters also grow up or develop in a predictable way—albeit one that is antisocial. By contrast, life-course theories portray the growth process as a messier affair. People do not flower like a plant in ways that can be neatly and confidently predicted. Rather, they head along trajectories—either conformist or criminal—until some event redirects their lives. In this view, going into and out of crime can be explained by pointing to risk and protective factors, but the precise timing of changes in life for any individual is virtually random.

In this essay, our concern is not with the technical distinctions between developmental and life-course theories. This debate is useful to keep in mind, but our assigned task lies elsewhere. Specifically, our goal is to present an overview of the major developmental and life-course theories. In doing so, our special interest is in explaining how different theories explain why some individuals—typically starting in childhood—are placed on a pathway or trajectory toward a life in antisocial conduct and crime. Some theories also have something to say about change—how offenders extricate themselves from a criminal pathway. Where relevant, the issue of change is highlighted.

Having a firm grasp of the prevailing developmental and life-course theories is essential because the future investigations of crime will be shaped intimately by these competing perspectives. In a real sense, today’s criminology is life-course criminology. But sound theoretical knowledge also is relevant to this handbook because these perspectives identify key points in the life course where interventions might be targeted and key processes through which crime prevention might naturally occur in the social world. In the end, the apparent gulf between theory and intervention—the esoteric and the practical—is more myth than reality. To use our flashlight metaphor a final time, theories illuminate for practitioners the risk factors that should be targeted for intervention.

This essay provides a tour of developmental and life-course theories and thus is not arranged to derive empirical insights. Still, it is possible to demarcate several key lessons from the theoretical discussion that follows:

Traits or propensities conducive to antisocial conduct and crime develop in the womb and early in childhood. The roots of crime thus extend over the life course.

Antisocial orientations and behavior will be deepened if at-risk youngsters travel through family, peer, school, and community contexts that are troubled and criminogenic.

Punitive, stigmatizing criminal justice sanctions, including imprisonment, likely deepen criminal propensities.

Desistance from crime in adulthood requires not only social opportunities for change but also cognitive orientations that inspire offenders to forfeit a life in crime.

The sources of continuity in offending are often robust—which is why criminal careers persist over a number of years—but many also are amenable to change. Theoretically informed, evidence-based, and carefully planned interventions thus are likely to save many at-risk youngsters and adults from life-course-persistent offending.

The remainder of the essay is divided into eight sections. Section I examines Gottfredson and Hirschi’s claim that stable criminal behavior across life is due to low self-control, a propensity established in childhood. Section II reviews Moffitt’s insight that life unfolds in two distinct developmental pathways, including one that involves life-course-persistent offending. Section III discusses Hawkins and Catalano’s sociological theory of why youngsters develop along a delinquent as opposed to a prosocial pathway and how this information has been used to save youngsters from a criminal future. Section IV shows how Farrington has used empirical information on risk factors to formulate an integrated developmental theory of offending. Section V focuses on a perspective, labeling theory, often not defined as a life-course or developmental theory. Labeling theory is significant precisely because it cautions that attempts, especially by the criminal justice system, to dissuade people from offending can have the unanticipated consequence of increasing their criminality. Section VI highlights Hagan’s efforts to unravel why youngsters become embedded in a criminal trajectory. His special contribution is in revealing the necessity to take into account the criminogenic community contexts in which troubled youths are so often enmeshed. Section VII presents Sampson and Laub’s life-course theory that argues that the absence of social bonds explains why persistent offending occurs and the presence of social bonds explains how criminals desist from crime. They also assert that leaving crime involves something they call human agency, which roughly means that offenders exercise the will to halt their illegal conduct. Finally, building on the research of Maruna and of Giordano and colleagues, section VIII conveys another view of why offenders desist: they experience a cognitive transformation.

I. It’s Usually Too Late: Gottfredson and Hirschi’s Self-Control Theory

The developers of self-control theory, Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi, assume that the precursors to crime are laid down early in the life course (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990 ). Indeed, according to this theory, by the time children reach the ages of 11 or 12, the most important developmental events have already occurred. After children have passed that age, whatever remains in the way of human developmental stages is not particularly important for criminologists. So, what are the important developmental events? They can be found in the relationships and interactions that children have with their parents in the first decade of life. Depending on how parents treat their children early in the life course, the children will develop in one of two ways. If the parents do the “right” things, their children will become normal, conforming, and prosocial individuals. However, if the parents do the “wrong” thing, their children will develop into self-centered, impulsive, and anti-social individuals.

Good parents—that is, parents who do the right things—are strongly attached to their children. They care about their children and want them to develop as positively as possible. As a result of that caring and attachment, they monitor their children for signs of misbehavior, recognize misbehavior when it occurs, and punish such behavior in a firm and consistent manner. Treated in such a way, children will gradually develop self-control. People with self-control are not impulsive; they learn from experience; they are sensitive to the rights and feelings of others; and they think about the potential long-term consequences of their actions. It is important to note that in the eyes of Gottfredson and Hirschi ( 1990 , pp. 94–95), self-control is not something that people are born with or something that develops naturally over time. Rather, self-control results only from the positive actions of parents. It must be built into children.

Ineffective parents can fail in one or more ways. They may not be attached to their children, in which case nothing else matters. Even if they do care about their children, they may fail to monitor, recognize, or punish their deviant behavior. When parents consistently fail to perform these actions early in the life course, their children will not develop self-control. Rather, they will become people who are “impulsive, insensitive, physical (as opposed to mental), short-sighted, and non-verbal” (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990 , p. 90). That is, they will have low self-control.

People with low self-control are attracted to crime because it offers quick and relatively certain rewards. Most crimes do not require a lot of planning or effort. They are easy to carry out, potentially rewarding, fun, and exciting. People with low self-control are attracted to all of these characteristics. The fact that crimes hurt other people and do not pay off in the long run does not bother them.

Thus, in developmental terms, self-control theory is a propensity theory. It assumes that people have a more or less stable propensity to commit crime. This propensity is established early in the life course and does not change over time. That is, it is not influenced by later events that may happen in the life course. According to Gottfredson and Hirschi, then, there are only two main trajectories in crime—criminal or not—and they are established early as a result of the type of parenting the individual receives. Once a person has low self-control, it is too late to change him or her.

II. Focusing on Life-Course-Persistent Offenders: Moffitt’s Taxonomy Theory

In contrast to Gottfredson and Hirschi, Terrie Moffitt ( 1993 ) does not assume that criminal propensity is gradational, with people aligning on a continuum that ranges from a lot of self-control to no self-control. Rather, she has offered a taxonomy that divides youngsters into two very distinct groups that develop in quite different ways. Most children, she claims, engage in adolescence-limited offending. They are prosocial during childhood, get into trouble in adolescence, and then mature and leave crime behind. A smaller group of children, however, start life on a pathway to life-course-persistent offending. These individuals engage in a wide variety of criminal and antisocial behaviors throughout the life course. Thus, like Gottfredson and Hirschi, Moffitt believes that antisocial behavior remains stable in some individuals from very early childhood to adulthood. Accordingly, her theory of life-course persistence focuses on factors present at the very earliest moments in the life course. But here the two theories depart in their explanation of what occurs in childhood and beyond.

Moffitt contends that the life-course-persistent pattern of antisocial behavior arises out of the combination of a “vulnerable and difficult infant with an adverse rearing context” (Moffitt 1997 , p. 17). She envisions a child with a difficult temperament who is born to parents who are ill-equipped to handle the child’s problems. The child’s difficult temperament flows from what Moffitt calls neuropsychological deficits. These deficits may be genetically based or they may be caused by unhealthy prenatal conditions, such as poor nutrition, inadequate health care, and alcohol or drug use during pregnancy. Deficits in neuropsychological conditions and processes may affect temperament in such areas as activity level and emotional reactivity; behavioral development in speech, motor coordination, and impulse control; and cognitive abilities in attention, language, and reasoning (Moffitt 1997 , p. 18).

Children who suffer from neuropsychological deficits and who are born into disadvantaged or troubled families undergo negative encounters with their parents. The parents do not recognize or know how to properly respond to the child’s problems. In interactions with the child, they do the wrong thing at the wrong time. Over time, this “chain of failed parent/child encounters” aggravates the behavioral problems or tendencies that flow from the child’s neuropsychological deficits. Thus, a child with a neuropsychological deficit that promotes impulsivity grows up to be very impulsive because parents have not taken steps to help the child handle or ameliorate the behavioral effects of the condition. Thus, life-course-persistent antisocial behavior begins with the interaction between problem children and problem parents.

The early pattern of antisocial behavior persists into adolescence and later into adulthood. In part, this persistence is caused by the behavioral style that the individual developed as a child and carries over into later stages in the life course. The hyperactive child with poor self-control and limited cognitive abilities becomes an overactive adult who is self-indulgent and not very smart. When the person is a child, this constellation of traits leads to trouble, and it continues to do so as the person ages, producing continuous contemporary consequences. At each stage of the life course, this person’s behavioral style gets him or her into trouble with others.

Persistence in antisocial behavior, and specifically criminal behavior, also results from the cumulating effects of problems and failure over time. Beginning early in life, individuals on a life-course-persistent trajectory behave in ways that limit their future opportunities. Because they are so bothersome to be around, life-course-persistent individuals are often rejected and avoided by others. They have difficulty learning how to behave in a prosocial manner and so have few prosocial friends and little opportunity to practice conventional social skills. They do poorly in school and so never attain basic math and reading skills. Without these skills, their opportunities for legitimate employment are curtailed. Involvement in crime and delinquency leads to arrests and incarcerations, which further diminish opportunities for success in a conventional lifestyle. Cumulating consequences eventually ensnare the life-course-persistent individual in a deviant lifestyle from which escape becomes ever more difficult as time passes (Moffitt 1997 , pp. 21–23).

Like Gottfredson and Hirschi, Moffitt ( 1997 ) is not hopeful about the life-course-persistent individual’s chances for reform and reintegration into normal life. Her theory assumes that in regard to crime and antisocial behavior, there are a limited number of developmental paths or templates available for individuals to follow. Once a person is set upon one path early in life, there is little possibility that the person will change or develop in a different way. Her theory differs from low self-control theory in that she asserts that biological and genetic conditions play an important role in influencing developmental trajectories.

III. Social Development and Crime: Hawkins and Catalano’s Theory

David Hawkins, Richard Catalano, and their colleagues in the School of Social Work at the University of Washington designed their social development theory specifically to guide the creation of the Seattle Social Development Project (SSDP). Reflecting their background in social work, the SSDP was an early prevention intervention, with a research component, implemented in elementary schools that served high crime areas (Hawkins et al. 2007 ). It sought to target a variety of social factors in the individual youths, in their homes, and in their classrooms (Hawkins et al. 2007 ). Social-development theory was designed by identifying protective factors that promote prosocial development and thus sought to explain both prosocial and antisocial development (for a thorough review, see Catalano and Hawkins 1996 ).

Social development theory specifies how protective factors and risk factors interact to encourage either prosocial or antisocial development (Hawkins et al. 2007 ). It suggests that as individuals socially develop from early childhood to adolescence, prosocial and antisocial influences have a cumulative effect on behavioral tendencies. As its name suggests, the theory is developmental , arguing that youngsters take one of two possible pathways: prosocial or antisocial. Also as its name suggests, the causal factors are seen as primarily social , which means that youths on the antisocial pathway can be saved if exposed to a new set of social experiences. This is unlike the more dismal views of self-control theory and Moffitt’s taxonomy perspective that locate antisocial propensities in more resistant individual traits.

Social development theory is an integrated perspective, drawing ideas mainly from social bond theory and differential association/social learning theory. According to this model, individuals are presented with opportunities to engage in various activities and to interact with certain people. If individuals have the skills to participate with others, they are positively reinforced. They then form attachments or bonds to these people. These bonds are a conduit for embracing moral beliefs, which then direct behavioral choices (Catalano et al. 2005 ).

This sequence characterizes both the prosocial and antisocial developmental pathways. Youths on the prosocial trajectory have opportunities to develop prosocial associations. If they are skilled, they are reinforced during these interactions (e.g., praised, accepted by peers) and form bonds to prosocial others. They come to believe in the conventional moral order and thus engage in conventional conduct. By contrast, some youngsters have access to antisocial opportunities for interaction. Again, if skilled in these engagements, they are positively reinforced, develop close social bonds with deviant others, and thus internalize antisocial values. The result is antisocial behavior.

Importantly, most theories do not include the variable of “skills for interaction” (Catalano et al. 2005 ). This is a key insight because it means that simple exposure to prosocial influences may not ensure a healthy social development if youngsters lack the skills to interact with prosocial peers and succeed in school. Youths lacking effective social and emotional skills thus risk rejection and failure and might then seek out antisocial peers.

A critical issue is what determines why, early in life, some youngsters are presented with an abundance of prosocial opportunities whereas others have easy access to antisocial opportunities. The causal model proposed by social development theory specifies three “exogenous” factors that push children in one direction or another. The first is position in the social structure, which places youngsters in contexts that provide differential opportunity (e.g., an inner city marked by concentrated disadvantage versus an affluent neighborhood). The second factor is captured by the construct of external constraints. By this, Hawkins and colleagues mean the extent to which youths confront laws, norms, and expectations that promote prosocial conduct. Prosocial constraints might be more available in middle-class areas, but they can flourish as well within families and classrooms within at-risk communities. This is why interventions that improve parental and classroom management skills can foster prosocial behavior. The third factor is termed individual constitutional factors, such as hyperactivity and difficult temperament. Youths with these traits are, without intervention, less likely to be successful in prosocial interactions and find more reinforcement and attractive bonds from antisocial peers (Catalano et al. 2005 ; Hawkins et al. 2003 ; Hawkins et al. 2007 ).

Finally, social development theory is dynamic, not static. It assumes that development is ongoing and that what happens at one life stage affects what happens at later stages. In particular, the model proposes a “recursive process in which behavioral outcomes at each age affect developmental trajectories by affecting the subsequent opportunities encountered by the individual” (Hawkins et al. 2003 , p. 274). In this way, antisocial behavior tends to trap youngsters on an antisocial pathway where they will stay unless an intervention is forthcoming.

In this regard, based on social development theory, SSDP was implemented to encourage the exposure of youths to protective factors and to discourage the exposure of youths to risk factors. Social development theory suggests that prosocial development is affected by individual, family, and school-based factors. As a result, the intervention provided social and emotional skill development programming for children, child behavioral management training programming for parents, and classroom instruction and management programming for teachers (Hawkins et al. 2007 ). The intervention’s evaluation employed a longitudinal panel design, which was able to track youths on a variety of social development factors throughout the course of their lives. The evaluation research has shown that youths who received the full treatment from the intervention were more likely to score higher on measures of prosocial development and to score lower on measures of antisocial development at many stages in the study, including during the intervention (age 12) and years after the intervention ended (ages 18 and 21) (see Hawkins, Von Cleve, and Catalano 1991 ; Hawkins et al. 1999 ; Hawkins et al. 2005 ).

IV. Explaining Criminal Tendencies and Criminal Events: Farrington’s Integrated Cognitive Antisocial Potential Theory

As the long-term director of the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development and investigator of criminal careers, David Farrington developed a broad and deep knowledge of criminogenic risk factors and how they cause wayward behavior (Farrington 2003 ). With this empirical knowledge, he finally ventured forth to formulate a developmental/life-course theory, which he calls an Integrated Cognitive Antisocial Potential Theory (IACP Theory) (Farrington 2005 a ). The Cambridge Study allowed Farrington to examine the development of delinquency in a sample of 411 males from South London for 40 years. In the process, Farrington became interested in the identification and measurement of a variety of short- and long-term influences of delinquency (for a review, see Farrington 2003 ).

Farrington ( 1996 ) developed his theory in an integrative fashion in order to explain the risk factors that had been shown to have the most support in explaining crime and criminal behavior. Incorporating concepts from social learning theory, cognitive theory, strain theory, several control theories, labeling theory, and routine activity theory, Farrington ( 1996 ) sought to explain the causation of both crime and criminals. The empirically established risk factors (Farrington 2003 ) can be categorized into one of two types: first, long-term risk factors that encouraged the development of criminal tendencies; and, second, short-term environmental risk factors that immediately encourage criminal events.

Farrington ( 2005 a ) suggested that to adequately explain criminal behavior, it is necessary to address two different questions: (1) “Why do people become criminals?”; (2) “Why do people commit offenses?” (Farrington 2005 a , p. 73). That is, the explanation of criminal behavior must be concerned with the interactions between individual long-term developmental tendencies and short-term environmental factors. Similar to other life-course research, Farrington’s theory focuses on how stable characteristics between individuals and short-term characteristics within individuals interact to produce crime (see, e.g., Horney, Osgood, and Marshall 1995 ).

Long-term risk factors are those that are related to the development of stable, individual differences in the likelihood to offend. These factors can be categorized as energizing, modeling, and socialization. Energizing factors—such as desires for material items, status, excitement, or sexual activity—produce drives that can be satisfied in an antisocial manner. Farrington ( 2005 a ) suggested that antisocial role models also are a factor in producing antisocial tendencies because they model and reinforce the antisocial means of meeting their energizing drives. Socialization is thought to discourage antisocial behavior by producing attachments to prosocial parents and developing self-control with the consistent use of discipline (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990 ; Sampson and Laub 1993 ). The failure to develop prosocial attachments or forming attachments to antisocial individuals thus encourages long-term antisocial development.

Criminologists have noted that although there are individual differences in long-term criminal tendencies, even the highest risk criminals are not engaging in crime all of the time (see Horney, Osgood, and Marshall 1995 ). Instead, each individual criminal interacts with short-term changes in their environment that provide opportunities and incentives to offend. These immediate environmental influences thus encourage the onset of a specific criminal event. Farrington’s ICAP theory seeks to explain how criminal tendencies interact with these short-term environmental influences to produce crime.

Short-term energizing factors include anger, boredom, frustration, and intoxication. These factors produce immediate pressure (or strain) to engage in antisocial behavior. Being in environments that expose individuals to antisocial opportunities is considered a product of the routine activities of criminals (e.g., partying, drug use) and is viewed as encouraging criminal behavior in the short term. An individual’s cognitive thought process is important because it works to moderate the impact of the environment on criminal behavior. That is, when provided with a drive and opportunity to engage in crime, individuals’ cognitive ability is related to how they interpret the positive and negative consequences for their actions. Finally, if individuals are rewarded for their antisocial behavior, their attitudes regarding rewards and punishment for the act could become more favorable toward the criminal act, thus encouraging future criminal behavior (Farrington 2005 a ).

Notably, Farrington has written a fair amount regarding how his theory can be used to prevent criminals and crime (for a review, see Farrington 1996 ). Not surprisingly, the interventions he suggests can be divided into two categories: first, early interventions that work to discourage the development of criminal tendencies; and, second, interventions that target individuals who have developed criminal tendencies and attempts to discourage them from engaging in criminal acts in the short term. Early interventions, such as prenatal nursing care, parental management classes, and early intellectual enrichment, target at-risk youth and seek to discourage the development of an individual who is predisposed to engage in antisocial behavior (Farrington and Welsh 2007 ). In the short term, situational crime prevention strategies and community mobilization seek to increase guardians and reduce the opportunities that provide incentives to engage in criminal behavior.

In sum, by focusing on both long-term and short-term causes of criminal behavior, Farrington’s ( 2005 a ) ICAP theory seeks to explain the development of both criminal individuals and criminal events. He proposes that an individual’s criminal tendencies are developed over time and interact with short-term environmental factors to produce criminal behavior. His theory suggests that crime can be prevented by discouraging the development of criminal tendencies and by using situational crime-prevention approaches to reduce the likelihood that criminal individuals will engage in crime.

V. Making Matters Worse: Labeling Theory

In the 1970s, labeling theory emerged as a leading explanation for criminal behavior. When people break the law, it seems logical to arrest them, to stigmatize them as an “offender,” and to punish them by placing them behind bars. In fact, this is the central premise of deterrence theory—that inflicting such pain would teach offenders that crime does not pay and make them avoid illegal conduct in the future. Labeling theory, however, challenged this commonsense idea. The perspective made the provocative claim that pulling offenders deep into the criminal justice system had the unanticipated consequence of increasing their criminal propensities. In fact, publicly labeling and treating people as serious offenders only served to stabilize their involvement in crime and to create career criminals. As Edwin Lemert ( 1951 ) argued, societal reaction could transform potentially transitory, unorganized “primary deviance” into stable, organized “secondary deviance.” Importantly, because the labeling perspective appeared well before the advent of formal developmental and life-course theories, it has not often been conceptualized as contributing to our current understanding of how offenders’ criminality becomes stabilized. This blind spot is unfortunate because it has led most current life-course and developmental theories to ignore or downplay the role of criminal justice intervention in further entrapping offenders in a criminal trajectory.

Labeling theorists demarcated how state intervention might make matters worse—how it might, like taking the wrong medicine, have iatrogenic effects. For this reason, they called for a policy of “radical non-intervention” (Schur 1973 ). In essence, they argued that labeling places people on an antisocial pathway on which their exposure to risk factors for crime is increased, not decreased. Thus, when stigmatized and treated by everyone as an offender, individuals will internalize this negative identity, make it part of their self-concept, and then shape their behavior to be consistent with it. Further, especially when imprisoned, offenders are forced into contexts where they interact with other criminals, are cut off from bonds to family and conventional society, and experience social rejection and difficulty finding employment when reentering the community as an “ex-offender” (see also Pager 2007 ). Any thoughts that crime should be avoided because it does not pay are overwhelmed by the daily realities of public humiliation, social exclusion, and forces pushing them toward rather than away from criminal associations.

Labeling theory lost much of its appeal when it became apparent that people could embark on a criminal career well before being detected and sanctioned by the criminal justice system. If so, then it seemed that the sources of crime lay more fully in other social experiences, including dysfunctional families, delinquent peers, and disorganized or inequitable communities. Further, it was apparent that legal sanctions did not always make offenders more criminal; the empirical research on this issue was unclear. But these observations were taken too far at times. However true, they did not mean that criminal justice labeling is not implicated in stabilizing criminal involvement, at least under some circumstances (Palamara, Cullen, and Gersten 1986 ).

In this regard, John Braithwaite ( 1989 ) has proposed that when offenders are shamed in a reintegrative way—when their bad acts are condemned but they are welcomed back into the community—their criminal involvement lessens. However, stigmatizing shaming—when offenders are condemned and excluded from the community—leads to more crime. Similarly, Lawrence Sherman ( 1993 ) notes that criminal sanctions foster defiance and more offending when individuals, with few existing bonds to society, perceive that they are treated unjustly and with disrespect by criminal justice officials. Finally, Don Andrews and James Bonta ( 2010 ) reveal that high-quality correctional rehabilitation programs reduce recidivism, but that punitive programs, especially when applied to low-risk offenders, produce high rates of reoffending (see also Cullen and Jonson forthcoming).

Perhaps most important, recent research has reported results supporting the labeling theory claim that justice system processing increases, rather than decreases, criminal involvement (see, e.g., Bernburg and Krohn 2003 ; Bernburg, Krohn, and Rivera 2006 ; Chiricos et al. 2007 ). In particular, several longitudinal studies have shown that imprisonment has a criminogenic rather than a deterrent effect (Spohn and Holleran 2002 ; Nieuwbeerta, Nagin, and Blokland 2009 ; see also Nagin, Cullen, and Jonson 2009 ). Although this finding is typically ignored in summaries of their theory, Sampson and Laub ( 1993 ) found that imprisonment increased offending by attenuating offenders’ bonds to conventional society. Given the high rate of incarceration in the United States—with approximately 2.4 million offenders behind bars on any given day—the effects of imprisonment and other forms of criminal justice labeling thus clearly warrant consideration. Phrased differently, no understanding of the development of offending over the life course will be complete unless the effects of criminal justice processing—a common experience for most persistent offenders—are systematically taken into account.

VI. Trapped in Crime: Hagan’s Theory of Criminal Embeddedness

John Hagan has constructed a developmental theory of street crime in America (Hagan 1991 , 1997 ). His theory is distinguished from most others in the life-course perspective by its explicit emphasis on historically based macro social and economic processes, most notably what he calls “capital disinvestment.” Capital disinvestment is something that happened to minority communities and neighborhoods over the course of the latter half of the 20th century.

According to Hagan ( 1997 ), in the 1970s the American economy began to slow down after a long period of postwar expansion. During this slowdown, core manufacturing jobs in auto plants and steel mills began to disappear from American cities in the Northeast and Midwest. Jobs in manufacturing had provided a means of economic advancement for African Americans and other minorities. Although the economy eventually created new jobs, these jobs were located in rural and suburban areas where African Americans were not welcome. Policies of residential segregation made it difficult for African Americans to leave inner-city neighborhoods and move to the suburbs, where the economy’s new jobs were being created (Hagan 1997 , p. 290). Young minority males and females were, in effect, trapped in communities in which there were few opportunities in the legitimate economy (Wilson 1987 ).

In addition to being located in areas from which African Americans were segregated, the economy’s new jobs increasingly required advanced education and high-level technical skills. It was not easy for African Americans to fulfill these requirements. Opposition to affirmative action laws gained strength during the last quarter of the century and restricted the access of African Americans to college and to good jobs in the legitimate economy. Racial differentials in earnings and educational achievement, which had been declining, began to grow again. Race-linked inequality became worse after the mid-1970s. According to Hagan, the rise in racial inequality led to feelings of “resentment, frustration, hopelessness, and aggression” in America’s minority youths (Hagan 1997 , p. 291).

Residential segregation and racial inequality combined to create hyper-ghettos. In hyper-ghettos, poverty is extreme and extensive. People who are lucky enough to have good jobs and a little money leave as quickly as they can. Only the most disadvantaged and discouraged are left behind. As a result, poverty is concentrated in hyper-ghettos, and the variation in economic resources becomes extremely narrow. Everyone is poor and everyone must struggle to survive.

The processes of capital disinvestment led communities to develop alternative forms of economic organization, called “forms of recapitalization” (Hagan 1997 , p. 296). By recapitalization, Hagan means that communities attempt to organize whatever resources are available so that they can be used to help community members achieve their goals. Often, according to Hagan, the only economic resources that disadvantaged communities have at their disposal are illicit. They can offer the outside world something that is not available via the conventional economy. They can offer access to illegal services and commodities, such as prostitution, gambling, and especially narcotic drugs. These communities become deviance service centers for conventional society, places where illicit services and commodities are provided for a price.

Young people who live in disadvantaged communities are drawn to the promise of the deviance service industry. In their eyes, becoming involved in the drug economy or prostitution is a way to get ahead. It is a means for getting money, fine clothes, and fancy cars. Jobs in the legitimate economy are not available to them or to their parents. The prospects of going to college seem dim. The deviance service industry is the most promising employer around, and so young people lacking access to legitimate employment take advantage of what is available. They take positions in the drug economy.

Hagan notes that deviance service centers are not a new urban phenomenon. Indeed, they have a long history in America. Throughout the 19th and early part of the 20th century, different ethnic groups used the deviance service industry as a means of social mobility. Participation in organized crime was a way to acquire the financial resources necessary to move out of the ghetto and into mainstream society. But times have changed, and the deviance service industry is no longer the mobility ladder it once was. Rather than providing a route out of the ghetto and out of a life of crime, participation in deviance and vice is more likely to embed young people in a criminal lifestyle.

The process of criminal embeddedness links the historical community-level processes of capital disinvestments and recapitalization to the life-course trajectories of individuals. Young people, who become involved in the deviance service industry, and especially the drug economy, isolate themselves from conventional employment and educational trajectories. They spend time with other criminals like themselves. Their social contacts are with others in the deviance industry and not with people who might provide access to legitimate employment or who might help them succeed in school. Cutting ties with conventional others is one aspect of criminal embeddedness. The other aspect is the high probability that the individual will eventually be arrested and be officially labeled as a criminal offender. Being labeled a criminal makes it exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for young minority males and females to ever find a way out of crime and into the middle class. Their life-course trajectories are set in a downward spiral of cumulating disadvantages from which there is little hope of escape.

Overall, Hagan’s theory focuses on how broad changes and patterns in the economy and social structure are linked to the life-course trajectories of individuals. Capital disinvestment has created neighborhoods and communities that have relatively little conventional social or cultural capital. The parents of children who grow up in these communities are not well equipped to help their children develop worthwhile skills. Because the parents do not have strong links to the conventional labor market, they also have few resources to help their children find decent jobs in the legitimate economy. Young people see the deviance service industry as the most promising source of employment. Individuals who succumb to the lures of the deviance industry risk becoming embedded in criminal lifestyles that isolate them from conventional educational and employment trajectories. Their trajectories in crime are characterized by continuity into adulthood. Hagan explains the severity and longevity of the criminal trajectories of urban underclass youth by emphasizing the powerful shaping force of personal and neighborhood social disadvantages. Individual-level differences in personal constitutions do not figure prominently in his theory.

VII. Firming Up Social Bonds: Sampson and Laub’s Age-Graded Theory

Robert Sampson and John Laub have advanced an age-graded theory of informal social control to explain trajectories in crime and delinquency (Sampson and Laub 1993 ; Sampson 1997 ; Laub, Nagin, and Sampson 1998 ; Laub and Sampson 2003 ). As control theorists, Sampson and Laub start with the assumption that delinquency, crime, and deviance are natural. If people are not somehow controlled or prevented from following their natural inclinations, they will tend to behave in ways that society regards as antisocial or criminal. The theory of age-graded informal social control holds that the most important sources of control come from informal bonds between people.

Sampson and Laub argue that at different stages in the life course, individuals are potentially subject to different forms of informal social control. (Again, this is why their theory is age-graded .) For children, family and school bonds are important. Children who are strongly bonded to their parents and who care about school are less likely to be involved in delinquency than children who have difficult relations with their parents or who do not like school. As children move through the life course, the major sources of informal social control change. Parents and school are not as important for young adults as they are for children and teenagers. For young adults, employment and marriage are potential sources of informal control. Informal social controls influence the likelihood and degree of involvement in crime and deviance at all stages of the life course.

Sampson and Laub recognize that ontogenetic differences between individuals—that is, persistent underlying differences in temperament and criminal potential—may account for some of the variation in criminal behavior. But, unlike Moffitt ( 1993 ) or Gottfredson and Hirschi ( 1990 ), they place much less emphasis on the idea of stable differences in criminal propensity. Rather, they stress the importance of strong informal social controls based in family, schools, friends, and employment.

As teenagers move into young adulthood, two factors begin operating that shape adult patterns in crime. First, young adults potentially become subject to new forms of informal social control. These new forms of control include employment and marriage. Individuals who are lucky enough to find good jobs or enter good marriages or both become subjugated to new informal controls. According to Sampson and Laub, exposure to these adult forms of social control can redirect the criminal trajectories of individuals who were seriously delinquent as youths.

But the chances that a seriously delinquent youth will find a good job or marry a supportive spouse are less than ideal because of the second factor that begins operating in adulthood. Youths who are seriously delinquent accumulate disadvantages as they age. These cumulative disadvantages snowball, or pile up, over time, making it increasingly more difficult for the individual to exit from a life of crime. These disadvantages are generated most directly by official sanctions, such as arrest, conviction, and incarceration, which label and stigmatize individuals. Being officially labeled as a serious delinquent dramatically reduces future educational and employment opportunities (Sampson and Laub 1993 ). The individual runs the risk of becoming trapped in a cycle in which crime leads to failure in conventional activities, which in turn motivates further involvement in crime. Thus, Sampson and Laub hypothesize that there is an interaction between early criminal propensities and societal reactions that influences the adult life chances of delinquent youths. Continuity in criminal behavior is not solely the result of underlying criminal propensities; it also is caused by societal reactions.

There are two distinguishing features of Sampson and Laub’s theoretical work. The first is their claim that social processes can cause even serious adult criminals to desist from crime. They argue that even for very committed offenders, change is possible and can occur relatively late in life. Developing adult social bonds to work and family can inhibit adult criminality and deviance (Sampson and Laub 1993 ; Laub, Nagin, and Sampson 1998 ). The second distinguishing feature is their use of the concept of “human agency” as an important determinant of trajectories in crime (Laub and Sampson 2003 ). Agency refers to our capacity to exercise control over our lives. We are agents when we intentionally make things happen by our own actions (Bandura 2001 ). The principle of human agency holds that “individuals construct their own life course through the choices and actions they take within the opportunities and constraints of history and social circumstances” (Elder 1998 , p. 4).

Sampson and Laub argue that even serious adult criminals can exercise agency. They can make changes in their lives, most notably the change of desisting from crime. A change of this sort is most likely to occur when an offender confronts some sort of turning point that provides an opportunity for the individual to redirect his or her life in a prosocial direction. Such a turning point might be finding a supportive partner of the opposite sex, obtaining a satisfying job, joining the military, or simply moving to a different neighborhood. The important thing is that the turning point presents an opportunity for the offender to “knife off” a way of life conducive to crime—that is, to break away from old patterns of behavior and become involved in new, more structured activities. Gradually this change in the structure of the offender’s routine activities, coupled with new informal social controls administered by partners or employers, leads the offender away from a life in crime and toward a life of prosocial conformity.

Sampson and Laub argue that change and desistance can happen to almost all offenders and at any point in the life course. The life course is, in their view, much more indeterminate and random than conceptualized in the more developmental theories proposed by Gottfredson and Hirschi and by Moffitt. They oppose the idea that there are only a small number of fixed trajectories that people follow in regard to crime and deviance. As they see it, change, growth, and development are ever-present features of the life course.

VIII. Understanding the Change Process: Cognitive Transformation

Sampson and Laub’s insights on human agency as an integral part of the desistance process suggests that, beyond life transformations—such as finding a good spouse or job—something occurs inside an offender’s mind that prompts change; that is, somehow a cognitive transformation takes place. The construct of human agency seems too broad and amorphous to capture fully this internal process of rethinking one’s life that appears to transpire. Other scholars, however, have begun to unravel what might be involved. Two contributions have proven most persuasive.

In his book Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives , Shadd Maruna ( 2001 ) confronted this issue when studying and interviewing 65 offenders and ex-offenders in Liverpool, England. These offenders were the living embodiment of the social development and life-course theories described in this chapter. Facing dismal futures, their lives had been marked by “poverty, child abuse, detachment from the labor force, the stigma of social sanctions, low educational attainment, few legitimate opportunities in the community, serious addictions and dependencies, high-risk personality profiles, and, of course, long-term patterns of criminal behavior” (2001, p. 55). Maruna’s conundrum was that despite virtually identical backgrounds, some interviewees were continuing in crime (as might be expected) but others were not. The risk factors that fostered and sustained their criminal careers thus could not explain this split in the sample. What, then, distinguished desisters from persisters? Maruna’s answer was the narratives or “scripts” they used to describe their lives and futures.

According to Maruna, the persistent offenders thought that they were “doomed to deviance” (p. 74). Thus, they conceptualized their fate by embracing a “condemnation script” in which they felt that they were “condemned” to a life in crime by circumstances beyond their control (p. 73). Although not expressing any attraction to crime, they felt that they had no choice but to continue in their criminal careers. By contrast, those who desisted adopted the “rhetoric of redemption” (p. 85). They reinterpreted their lives through a “redemption script” in which previous criminal conduct was not seen as controlling their future. They denied that past bad acts reflected who they were “deep down”; their “real me” or “true self” was as a decent person (pp. 88–89). Previous difficult days in crime were now seen as making them stronger and as giving them a special calling to do good (e.g., to save juveniles now in trouble). They would no longer waste their lives but seek a higher purpose in helping others (p. 99). In short, the redemption script equipped offenders with a “coherent prosocial identity” that enabled them to resist criminal temptations and to “make good” in society (p. 7).

Peggy Giordano, Stephen Cernkovich, and Jennifer Rudolph ( 2002 ) were led to a similar conclusion. They interviewed a sample of 210 males and females, now in their late 20s, who they had first studied 13 years before as serious delinquents. Using both self-report and arrest data, they surprisingly did not find, as had Sampson and Laub ( 1993 ), that adult social bonds—job stability and attachment to spouse and children—were strong predictors of desistance. Rather, based on their qualitative interview data, Giordano and colleagues observed a more complex picture of desistance. For them, events such as acquiring a good job and marriage are best seen not as inevitable turning points away from crime but as potential “hooks for change” (p. 1000). These prosocial opportunities either can be latched onto or forfeited (e.g., acting badly can cause one to lose a job or a mate). Human agency, as Laub and Sampson ( 2003 ) say, is involved, but it is not a mysterious phenomenon. Rather, taking advantage of hooks for change involves a definable process that tends to involve four “types of intimately related cognitive transformations” (p. 1000).

First, the offender must possess a general openness to change. Second, the person must look favorably upon a specific hook for change and see embracing this hook (e.g., a new relationship) as being “fundamentally incompatible with continued deviation” (Giordano, Cernkovich, and Rudolph 2002 , p. 1001). Third, the offender must begin to fashion a new conventional identity, what Giordano and colleagues call a “replacement self” (p. 1001). Fourth, the individual must come to see continued wayward conduct negatively. Thus, a “deviant behavior or lifestyle” is no longer viewed as “positive, viable, or even personally relevant” (p. 1002). In this way, the motivation to deviate vanishes, and the offender’s cognitive transformation into a conventional member of society is completed.”

Notably, most developmental and life-course theories have been built on data drawn from longitudinal empirical studies that have uncovered the risk factors that contribute to a criminal career. Giordano and colleagues’ and Maruna’s work suggests, however, that such theories might profit from qualitative projects that seek to illuminate how offenders experience their worlds, in terms of both staying in and finding a way out of their lives in crime.

IX. Conclusion

Developmental and life-course theories of offending have increasingly emerged over the past two decades. It now is clear that no understanding of crime, especially persistent involvement in antisocial conduct, can be achieved without a systematic empirical and theoretical demarcation of how individuals move into and out of crime at different points in their lives (Farrington 2005 b ; Thornberry and Krohn 2003 ). As seen in this essay, we are fortunate that scholars have furnished a diversity of important clues about the development of criminality over the life course. However, it is perhaps possible to distill a core insight that underlies the broader theoretical paradigm into which these varied contributions fall.

Thus, upon entering this world, children might be said to board a train. For most, they will be passengers on a train that will head out into life on tracks leading to a prosocial destination. Some of these youngsters, especially in adolescence, will detour off this track. But they will have the individual traits, social supports, and prosocial influences to jump back aboard the train. A smaller group of children, however, will not be so fortunate. They will board a train destined for life-course-persistent offending. Often starting while still in the womb, they will be exposed to an array of criminogenic risk factors. They will be burdened with individual traits, such as a lack of self-control, that will make negotiating their lives challenging. They will be raised by parents with poor child-management skills and be enmeshed in communities where criminal influences are ubiquitous and conventional opportunities are scarce. They may travel through the criminal justice system, which may well just deepen their criminality. As their journey proceeds, they will find it difficult to depart their train, which may well have gathered so much momentum as to make escape unthinkable. Eventually, their train will lose speed and they will step off. But by that time, they will have been carried so far into their lives that they will have experienced much harm and, it must be added, done much harm to others.

Of course, any metaphor has its limitations, but the image of a train heading out into a prosocial or antisocial direction in life’s beginning stages has its utility. Theoretically, it tells us that the roots of crime potentially extend to childhood and place youngsters on trajectories in which one bad thing often leads to another. Understanding these pathways is the central challenge for developmental and life-course theories.

Perhaps more important, the train metaphor reminds us that the keys to saving children from a career in crime must extend to the front part of life (Farrington and Welsh 2007 ). As it turns out, most serious offenders receive very little, if any, intervention prior to being arrested and entering the justice system (Stouthamer-Loeber et al. 1995 ). It is still possible to intervene with correctional rehabilitation programs at this time; indeed, there is a growing knowledge of how to treat serious juvenile and adult offenders effectively (MacKenzie 2006 ; Andrews and Bonta 2010 ). But a developmental perspective provides a compelling rationale for not waiting until criminal careers have matured—for saving youngsters while the train is still in the station or has not ventured too far into life. As Farrington and Welsh ( 2007 , p. 159) tell us, it is “never too early” to assist at-risk children with early intervention programs. Importantly, there is now an array of such programs that evaluation research has demonstrated have the capacity to derail antisocial development and to place youngsters on a pathway with a hopeful future.

Andrews, D. A., and James Bonta. 2010 . The Psychology of Criminal Conduct , 5th ed. New Providence, NJ: Anderson/LexisNexis.

Google Scholar

Google Preview

Bandura, Albert. 2001 . “ Social Cognitive Theory: An Agentic Perspective. ” Annual Review of Psychology 52:1–26.

Bernburg, Jon Gunnar, and Marvin D. Krohn. 2003 . “ Labeling, Life Chances, and Adult Crime: The Direct and Indirect Effects of Official Intervention in Adolescence on Crime in Early Adulthood. ” Criminology 41:1287–318.

Bernburg, Jon Gunnar, Marvin D. Krohn, and Craig J. Rivera. 2006 . “ Official Labeling, Criminal Embeddedness, and Subsequent Delinquency: A Longitudinal Test of Labeling Theory. ” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 43:67–88.

Braithwaite, John. 1989 . Crime, Shame and Reintegration . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Catalano, Richard. F., and J. David Hawkins. 1996 . “The Social Development Model: A Theory of Antisocial Behavior.” In Delinquency and Crime: Current Theories , edited by J. David Hawkins. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Catalano, Richard F., Jisuk Park, Tracy W. Harachi, Kevin P. Haggerty, Robert D. Abbott, and J. David Hawkins. 2005 . “Mediating Effects of Poverty, Gender, Individual Characteristics, and External Constraints on Antisocial Behavior: A Test of the Social Development Model and Implications for Developmental Life-Course Theory.” In Integrated Developmental and Life-Course Theories of Offending: Advances in Criminological Theory , vol. 14, edited by David P. Farrington. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Chiricos, Ted., Kellie Barrick, William Bales, and Stephanie Bontrager. 2007 . “ The Labeling of Convicted Felons and Its Consequences for Recidivism. ” Criminology 45:547–81.

Cullen, Francis T., and Cheryl Lero Jonson. Forthcoming . “Labeling Theory and Correctional Rehabilitation: Beyond Unanticipated Consequences.” In Empirical Tests of Labeling Theory: Advances in Criminological Theory , vol. 17, edited by David P. Farrington and Joseph Murray. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Elder, Glen H., Jr. 1998 . “ The Life Course as Developmental Theory. ” Child Development 69:1–12.

Farrington, David P. 1996 . “The Explanation and Prevention of Youthful Offending.” In Delinquency and Crime: Current Theories , edited by J. David Hawkins. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Farrington, David P. 2003 . “Key Results from the First Forty Years of the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development.” In Taking Stock of Delinquency: An Overview of Findings from Contemporary Longitudinal Studies , edited by Terence P. Thornberry and Marvin D. Krohn. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.

Farrington, David P. 2005 a. “The Integrated Cognitive Antisocial Potential (ICAP) Theory.” In Integrated Developmental and Life-Course Theories of Offending: Advances in Criminological Theory , vol. 14, edited by David P. Farrington. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Farrington, David P., ed. 2005 b. Integrated Developmental and Life-Course Theories of Offending: Advances in Criminological Theory , vol. 14. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Farrington, David P., and Brandon C. Welsh. 2007 . Saving Children from a Life in Crime: Early Risk Factors and Effective Interventions . New York: Oxford University Press.

Giordano, Peggy C., Stephen A. Cernkovich, and Jennifer L. Rudolph. 2002 . “ Gender, Crime, and Desistance: Toward a Theory of Cognitive Transformation. ” American Journal of Sociology 107:990–1064.

Gottfredson, Michael R., and Travis Hirschi. 1990 . A General Theory of Crime . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Hagan, John. 1991 . “ Destiny and Drift: Subcultural Preferences, Status Attainment, and the Risks and Rewards of Youth. ” American Sociological Review 56:567–82.

Hagan, John. 1997 . “Crime and Capitalization: Toward a Developmental Theory of Street Crime in America.” In Developmental Theories of Crime and Delinquency: Advances in Criminological Theory , vol. 7, edited by Terence P. Thornberry. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Hawkins, J. David, Richard F. Catalano, Rick Kosterman, Robert D. Abbott, and Karl G. Hill. 1999 . “ Preventing Adolescent Health-Risk Behaviors by Strengthening Protection During Childhood. ” Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 153:226–34.

Hawkins, J. David, Rick Kosterman, Richard F. Catalano, Karl G. Hill, and Robert D. Abbott. 2005 . “ Promoting Positive Adult Functioning Through Social Development Intervention in Childhood: Long-Term Effects from the Seattle Social Development Project. ” Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 159:25–31.

Hawkins, J. David, Brian H. Smith, Karl G. Hill, Rick Kosterman, Richard F. Catalano, and Robert D. Abbott. 2003 . “Understanding and Preventing Crime: Findings from the Seattle Development Project.” In Taking Stock of Delinquency: An Overview of Findings from Contemporary Longitudinal Studies , edited by Terence P. Thornberry and Marvin D. Krohn. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.

Hawkins, J. David, Brian H. Smith, Karl G. Hill, Rick Kosterman, Richard F. Catalano, and Robert D. Abbott. 2007 . “ Promoting Social Development and Preventing Health and Behavior Problems During the Early Elementary Grades: Results from the Seattle Social Development Project. ” Victims and Offenders 2:161–81.

Hawkins, J. David, Elizabeth Von Cleve, and Richard F. Catalano. 1991 . “ Reducing Early Childhood Aggression: Results from a Primary Prevention Program. ” Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 30:208–17.

Horney, Julie, D., Wayne Osgood, and Ineke Haen Marshall. 1995 . “ Criminal Careers in the Short-Term: Intra-Individual Variability in Crime and Its Relation to Local Life Circumstances. ” American Sociological Review 60:655–73.

Laub, John H., Daniel S. Nagin, and Robert J. Sampson. 1998 . “ Trajectories of Change in Criminal Offending: Good Marriages and the Desistance Process. ” American Sociological Review 63:225–38.

Laub, John H., and Robert J. Sampson. 2003 . Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70 . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Lemert, Edwin M. 1951 . Social Pathology: A Systematic Approach to the Theory of Sociopathic Behavior . New York: McGraw-Hill.

MacKenzie, Doris Layton. 2006 . What Works in Corrections: Reducing the Criminal Activities of Offenders and Delinquents . New York: Cambridge University Press.

Maruna, Shadd. 2001 . Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives . Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Moffitt, Terrie E. 1993 . “ Adolescence-Limited and Life-Course-Persistent Antisocial Behavior: A Developmental Taxonomy. ” Psychological Review 100:674–701.

Moffitt, Terrie E. 1997 . “Adolescence-Limited and Life-Course-Persistent Offending: A Complementary Pair of Developmental Theories.” In Developmental Theories of Crime and Delinquency: Advances in Criminological Theory , vol. 7, edited by Terence P. Thornberry. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Nagin, Daniel S., Francis T. Cullen, and Cheryl Lero Jonson. 2009 . “Imprisonment and Reoffending.” In Crime and Justice: A Review of Research , vol. 38, edited by Michael Tonry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Nieuwbeerta, Paul, Daniel S. Nagin, and Arjan A. Blokland. 2009 . “ The Relationship between First Imprisonment and Criminal Career Development: A Matched Samples Comparison. ” Journal of Quantitative Criminology 25:227–57.

Pager, Devah. 2007 . Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Palamara, Francs, Francis T. Cullen, and Joanne C. Gersten. 1986 . “ The Effect of Police and Mental Health Intervention on Juvenile Deviance: Specifying Contingencies in the Impact of Formal Reaction. ” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 27:90–105.

Sampson, Robert J. 1997 . “The Embeddedness of Child and Adolescent Development: A Community-Level Perspective on Urban Violence.” In Violence and Childhood in the Inner City , edited by Joan McCord. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Sampson, Robert J., and John H Laub. 1993 . Crime in the Making: Pathways and Turning Points Through Life . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Schur, Edwin M. 1973 . Radical Non-Intervention: Rethinking the Delinquency Problem . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Sherman, Lawrence W. 1993 . “ Defiance, Deterrence, and Irrelevance: A Theory of the Criminal Sanction. ” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 30:445–73.

Spohn, Cassia, and David Holleran. 2002 . “ The Effect of Imprisonment on Recidivism Rates of Felony Offenders: A Focus on Drug Offenders. ” Criminology 40:329–57.

Stouthamer-Loeber, Magda, Rolf Loeber, Welmoet van Kammen, and Quanwu Zhang. 1995 . “ Uninterrupted Delinquent Careers: The Timing of Parental Help-Seeking and Juvenile Court Contact. ” Studies on Crime and Crime Prevention 4:236–51.

Thornberry, Terence P., and Marvin D. Krohn, eds. 2003 . Taking Stock of Delinquency: An Overview of Findings from Contemporary Longitudinal Studies . New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.

Wilson, William Julius. 1987 . The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

About Oxford Academic
Publish journals with us
University press partners
What we publish
New features
Open access
Institutional account management
Rights and permissions
Get help with access
Accessibility
Advertising
Media enquiries
Oxford University Press
Oxford Languages
University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

Cookie settings
Cookie policy
Privacy policy
Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Social Developmental Crime Prevention Programs Essay

Memphis is one of the regions with the highest crime rate in the US (Consilience Group, 2011, p. 1). In 2009, more than half of those apprehended for involvement in violent crime were youths aged 24 years and below. The main risk factors for crime in Memphis include family poverty, poor parenting, and a disorganized neighborhood. Poverty is a top risk factor in Memphis. By 2011, the city had a child poverty rate of forty percent and population poverty of twenty-six percent (Consilience Group, 2011, p. 17). More than ten percent of children from poverty-stricken families stand a high risk of parental involvement in crime, substance abuse, neglect, abuse, and homelessness. One of the pointers of poverty in Memphis is living in a home where no adult holds a part or full-time job for a significant period of the year. A substantial proportion of youths who engage in crime are also drawn where one or both parents have been imprisoned or suffer from health complications. If family poverty is prevalent in the neighborhood or among peer groups, the prevalence of crime in such an environment is high (Schneider, 2010, p. 22).

The aspects of parenting that are related to the development of delinquent behavior include child supervision, discipline, and warm child-parent interactions (Schneider, 2010, p. 42). Families with erratic, lax, and harsh discipline have been found to raise antisocial and delinquent children. Longitudinal research on over 600 families revealed a relationship between the application of physical punishment and later delinquency (Schneider, 2010, p. 42). Effective discipline is also essential for bringing up children who are well-adjusted behaviorally and socially (Derzon, and Lipsey, 2000, p. 215).

Parental supervision entails setting boundaries and rules for the children and the use of appropriate discipline. Studies have found a correlation between poor supervision and delinquency (Schneider, 2010, p. 49). Family interaction patterns in terms of support, warmth, and rejection influence children’s behavior. Teenagers who receive high levels of warm treatment from parents have low chances of developing delinquency. Conversely, children who perceive rejection from their parents have a high tendency of becoming delinquent (Derzon, and Lipsey, 2000, p. 218).

Parenting hardly occurs in a vacuum; it is surrounded by a myriad of external factors that determine its quality and style. One of the main external factors that expose individuals to the risk of developing offensive conduct is a neighborhood (National Gang Center, 2010, p. 79). Adverse and disorganized neighborhoods expose persons to the development of deviant behaviors. In Memphis, children and youth face pervasive families, peers, and crime-ridden apartments and neighborhoods (Consilience Group, 2011, p. 19). Weak communities in the city are marked with homelessness, abandoned buildings, high residential turnover, and weak social controls. Between 2007 and 2009, the number of gangs in Memphis rose from 660 to 816. By 2010, 15.53% of all the housing units in the city were vacant (National Gang Center, 2010, p. 79). These characteristics allow deviant activities to go on unchecked. In addition, residing in a neighborhood with high levels of crime and drug abuse escalates the risk of engagement in crime (Elliott, 1994, p. 18).

Social developmental crime prevention programs are long-term approaches that address the causes of deviant conduct. Social development programs are aimed at alleviating the risk factors to crime and building protective factors that forestall those risks. Poverty as a risk factor can be mitigated through youth empowerment programs (Mrazek and Haggerty, 1994, p. 211). A community-visioning study conducted in Memphis identified youth development, career prospects, academic support, and family strengthening resources as some of the effective mechanisms of dealing with poverty (Consilience Group, 2011, p. 26). Youths can be empowered through the provision of quality education opportunities and financial support to pursue education. In addition, the education system should focus on employable skills to enable the youth to secure decent jobs. The government and non-governmental organizations need to collaborate in alleviating poverty at the family level (Consilience Group, 2011, p. 26).

Family-oriented risk factors can be addressed through parenting support and training programs (Felson, 2006, p. 29). Parenting support and training empower families to create a healthy environment for nurturing and raising children. Appropriate support empowers parents to deal with children’s upbringing matters. It involves the provision of advice, information, and skills that are essential to becoming good parents. Parenting support and training help parents understand their children’s needs and conduct. Indeed, parenting programs create an enabling environment for bringing up well-adjusted children (Felson, 2006, p. 30).

Citizen mobilization programs address the challenges posed by a disorganized neighborhood and build a protective environment that deters serious offenders (Farrington, 1997, p. 60). Some of the widely used citizen mobilization mechanisms are neighborhood networks and watch programs. Neighborhood networks in Memphis focus on the provision of resources and high-quality programs to the youths and families who are exposed to crime (Consilience Group, 2011, p. 30). The programs include teen pregnancy prevention, parenting support, mentoring, tutoring, internship, and after-school programs (Sampson and Radenbush, 2001, p. 61). The proponents of neighborhood watch programs argue that residents can check suspicious activities in their vicinity (Sampson and Radenbush, 2001, p. 61). The programs are started by community organizers in collaboration with the police department. The organizers recruit participants, hold meetings to discuss prevention techniques, disseminate information on home security, inspect homes, and exchange contacts (Farrington, 1997, p. 61).

Consilience Group. (2011). Operation safe community: Memphis youth violence prevention plan. Memphis: Consilience Group.

Derzon, J. H., and Lipsey, M. W. (2000). The correspondence of family features with problem, aggressive, criminal and violent behavior. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University.

Elliott, D. S. (1994). Serious violent offenders: Onset, developmental course, and termination. Criminology, 32 (1), 1–21.

Farrington, D. P. (1997). Early prediction of violent and non-violent youthful offending. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 5 (2):51–66.

Felson, M. (2006). Crime and nature . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Mrazek, P. J., and Haggerty, R. J. (1994). Reducing risks for mental disorders: Frontiers for preventative intervention research. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

National Gang Center. (2010). Best practices to address community gang problems: OJJDP’s comprehensive gang model. Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Sampson, R.J. and Radenbush, S. W. (2001). Disorder in urban neighborhoods-does it lead to crime . Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice.

Schneider, S. (2010). Crime prevention theory and practice . New York, NY: CRC Press.

Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2022, April 4). Social Developmental Crime Prevention Programs. https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-developmental-crime-prevention-programs/

"Social Developmental Crime Prevention Programs." IvyPanda , 4 Apr. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/social-developmental-crime-prevention-programs/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Social Developmental Crime Prevention Programs'. 4 April.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Social Developmental Crime Prevention Programs." April 4, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-developmental-crime-prevention-programs/.

1. IvyPanda . "Social Developmental Crime Prevention Programs." April 4, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-developmental-crime-prevention-programs/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Social Developmental Crime Prevention Programs." April 4, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-developmental-crime-prevention-programs/.

"The West Memphis 3" Documentary
Community Policing in Memphis
The Wakefield Police Department (WPD) in Memphis Solutions
Teaching Mathematics in Memphis City Schools
Adopted Children With Gay Parents Have Better Chances of Succeeding
Evaluating the Chances for Emotional Wellbeing
Learning to Understand the Instincts of the Crowd: Sociology as Another way to Interpret the Course of Humankind Development
Social Business Scope in Alleviating Poverty
FedEx Company and Its Marketing Strategy
"Histories" a Work by Herodotus
The 1919 Boston Police Strike
Displacement: Crime Prevention
Criminal Behavior and Risk Factors of Its Development
Cash Fraud and Necessary Controls
Administration of Criminal Justice - Elements of Planned Change Administrators

General Assembly

General Assembly Adopts Landmark Resolution on Steering Artificial Intelligence towards Global Good, Faster Realization of Sustainable Development

Adopting a landmark resolution on steering the use of artificial intelligence towards global good, the General Assembly today also stressed the importance of addressing racial discrimination around the world, including through reparations.

By the terms of the resolution titled “Seizing the opportunities of safe, secure, and trustworthy artificial intelligence systems for sustainable development” (document A/78/L.49 ), which it adopted without a vote, the Assembly resolved to bridge the artificial intelligence (AI) and other digital divides between and within countries and promote safe, secure and trustworthy AI systems to accelerate progress towards the full realization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Introducing that text, the representative of the United States noted the many existential challenges posed by artificial intelligence. The international community must “govern this technology rather than have it govern us”, she said. In a year when more than half of the world’s population will elect their leaders, AI-generated content holds the potential to undercut the integrity of political debates. However, it also holds profound opportunities to accelerate work, end poverty, save lives, protect the planet and create a more equitable world.

The technology is already being used, she added, to detect and diagnose disease earlier and more accurately; it is helping scientists better predict earthquakes, floods and hurricanes; and it is allowing vulnerable communities to prepare for and respond to natural disasters. “Simply put, AI is proving to be an engine for us all to make up lost ground and even meet the Sustainable Development Goals,” she said. Her country engaged with over 120 countries to craft a text that cements a global consensus, she said, adding that it is crucial to ensure that no Government or other actors can use AI to undermine peace and human rights.

The Assembly also observed the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which falls on 21 March every year. Assembly President Dennis Francis (Trinidad and Tobago) said that this annual commemoration is an opportunity to stand up alongside those who continue to fight racism and racial discrimination around the world. Millions worldwide still endure various forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance. Noting this year’s theme — A Decade of Recognition, Justice, and Development: Implementation of the International Decade for People of African Descent — he praised the adoption of national action plans against racism and recognition of the rights of people of African descent in national constitutions. Looking forward to next week’s observance of the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, he stressed the importance of reparatory justice.

Courtenay Rattray, Chef de Cabinet of the Executive Office of the Secretary-General, speaking on behalf of UN Secretary-General António Guterres, reflected that racism impacts communities differently. This year’s theme recognizes that people of African descent face a unique history of systemic and institutionalized racism and profound challenges. Member States must build on the tireless advocacy of people of African descent — from Governments advancing policies to eliminate racism to technology firms urgently addressing racial bias in artificial intelligence. “Let’s commit to work together to build a world of dignity, justice and equal opportunity for every community everywhere,” he stressed.

Speaking on his own behalf, he recalled that 60 years ago today, 69 people were killed and many injured when South African police opened fire on peaceful protesters in Sharpeville — courageous individuals demonstrating against the laws “which stood at the rotten heart of the Apartheid system.” He called on States to ratify the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and implement the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action. Countries responsible for the transatlantic slave trade must have the moral courage to deliver reparatory justice, including restitution where appropriate, and businesses that profited from the trade in human souls should also consider the case for reparations, he said.

Uganda’s representative, speaking for the African Group, expressed regret that there have been no comprehensive reparations to date for all the harm suffered by people of African descent. In December 2022, she said, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights adopted its first resolution on Africa’s reparations agenda and the human rights of Africans in the diaspora and people of African descent worldwide. The Commission called on States to create a committee to conceptualize reparations from Africa’s perspective, describe the harm occasioned by the tragedies of the past and establish a case for reparations for Africa’s claim.

Some Governments have taken initiatives to apologize and redress past legacies, she noted, calling for more positive and affirmative actions, including the return of stolen assets and economic development programmes. Colonialism and enslavement of Africans continues to reverberate through poverty, underdevelopment, marginalization, social exclusion, economic disparities, instability and insecurity. Highlighting the importance of debt relief, poverty eradication and transfer of technology, including digital technologies, she said: “Building a future of justice requires mending an unjust past.”

Echoing that, Verene Albertha Shepherd, Chair of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, also called on States which colonized and underdeveloped Africa and the Americas, including the Caribbean, to respond to calls for reparatory justice and economic empowerment for people of African descent. Pointing to how racist hate speech and racially motivated violence are “continuing to rear their ugly heads”, she cited the words of Jamaican reggae icons Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, and affirmed that many people are crying out for both peace and justice. “To speak the names of the ancestors is to make them live again and influence our actions today,” she said.

Haiti’s representative, speaking for the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), lamented “an unjust world, one seemingly not governed by any sense of international morality, with global values being increasingly tradable and transactional.” Systematic discrimination persists in trade, access to development, climate and concessional financing, debt relief, technology transfer and health care — often crippling the development of the world’s most vulnerable countries. Calling for “a definitive levelling of the playing field”, he urged the international community to address the issue of limited resources, particularly funding for the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent.

Speakers also acknowledged the many achievements of the International Decade for People of African Descent. Ilze Brand Kehris, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, said the Decade has facilitated dialogue on addressing systemic racism experienced by people of African descent globally. It has prompted States to adopt legal frameworks to combat racial discrimination in political participation, housing and interactions with law enforcement, among others. The Decade has also been a celebration of the contributions of people of African descent, she said, adding that their resilience to centuries of racist oppression must inspire the international community. This last year of the Decade is an opportunity to take stock and change course where needed.

June Soomer, Chair-designate of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, said the Forum’s establishment was a crucial achievement of the Decade. At the same time, the Decade calls for action and accountability. Marcus Garvey, she recalled, in his 1920 “Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World”, condemned the discrimination that denies the rights of people on no other basis than their race and colour. Over 100 years later, this remains true, she said, adding: “There is not a place in this world where discrimination does not occur against people of African descent.” While the Decade helped realize meaningful change, including awareness-raising and national legislative frameworks, addressing the historic injustice of colonialism, slavery and apartheid means dismantling structural barriers and ensuring equitable access to education, health and employment.

Uché Blackstock, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Advancing Health Equity, shared her experience as a doctor and the daughter of a doctor to draw attention to the impact of racism on health and health care. Her organization works with health-care organizations to dismantle racism in medicine. As a Black woman of African descent, she is still five times more likely to die of pregnancy-related complications than her white peers in the United States, she said, while Black infants are more than twice as likely to die in their first year of life than white infants — a larger gap than 15 years before the end of slavery. All health professionals should be trained in culturally responsive care and to recognize their own internal biases and racism, she said, adding: “But we need to act swiftly, as it is a matter of life and death.”

The representative of the United States, the host country, also shared her personal story, recalling that the first bus boycott of the Civil Rights era took place in Baton Rouge in her home state of Louisiana. She was a few months old at the time, she said, adding that her neighbours’ collective action reshaped the trajectory of Black lives around the country. Stressing the importance of tackling not only lingering systemic racism but also intergenerational trauma, she said it is vital to reflect on policies that deprived Native Americans of their sovereignty, while combating the rise of anti-Asian hate, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and anti-immigrant rhetoric. “While this work may begin at home, I also know the United States isn't an outlier,” she said, expressing solidarity with the millions of descendants of enslaved people around the world.

Belgium’s delegate, speaking for the European Union, said that racial discrimination runs counter to freedom, equality and democracy, the values that “our European Union has been built upon”. However, he acknowledged, a recent report by the Union’s Agency for Fundamental Rights reveals distressing reports of such discrimination in the Union’s territories. “Our work needs to start at home,” he said. Also noting that 2 billion voters are set to go to the polls this year, he said comprehensive efforts are required to safeguard voting rights, ensure representation and access, and fight hate speech on the campaign trail.

Along similar lines, the representative of Germany, speaking for the Western European and Other States Group, condemned all forms of racism and intolerance, and stressed the need to also address stereotyping, and stigmatization, as well as all forms of racist harassment, hate speech and incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence — online or offline. Urging the international community to dismantle the still-prevailing societal structures that perpetuate systemic racism, she called for full and effective implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. She further noted the role of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in monitoring that implementation, looking forward to participating in the third session of the Permanent Forum of People of African Descent in 2024.

Bahrain’s delegate, speaking for the Asia-Pacific Group, noted that hundreds of millions of people identifying themselves as being of African descent live in other parts of the world outside the African continent — including in his region. He expressed alarm at the global rise in hate speech, calling for concrete action to mobilize national, regional and international efforts to address all forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. He further reiterated the importance of fully implementing the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

Guatemala’s representative, speaking for the Latin American and Caribbean States, stressed: “We still have work to do.” While racial injustice has changed in form, it continues to be perpetuated, she said, expressing alarm about the rise of white supremacy and other forms of extremism around the world. The persistent spread of such ideas points to the need to fully implement the Durban Declaration. The international community cannot afford to allow such scourges to continue to grow, she cautioned, adding that humanity already knows what can happen when such dangerous ideologies are not checked. Further, the protection of all human rights is fundamental, she said, noting how discrimination intersects with the rights of migrants and refugees, Indigenous people, women and girls.

The Assembly also adopted a text (document A/78/L.47 ) proclaiming 2025 the International Year of Peace and Trust and calling upon the international community to resolve conflicts through inclusive dialogue and negotiation in order to ensure the strengthening of peace and trust in relations between Member States. Introducing that text, the speaker for Turkmenistan said the world currently faces a trust deficit. As a neutral country, Turkmenistan is committed to ensuring dialogue on critical issues, as well as preventive diplomacy and trust-building. Stressing the importance of non-confrontational diplomacy, she said it is vital to unlock opportunities for mutual understanding. The adoption of this text will reaffirm the international community’s commitment to peaceful settlement of disputes, she said.

By another text (document A/78/L.45 ), the Assembly declared 15 November the International Day for the Prevention of and Fight Against All Forms of Transnational Organized Crime in order to raise awareness of the threats posed by such crime and to enhance international cooperation in this regard. That text was introduced by the representative of Italy, on behalf of a number of countries, who pointed out that the designation of 15 November recalls the adoption of the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (also known as the Palermo Convention) on 15 November 2000.

The date “reminds us of our collective commitment to uphold the principles enshrined in the Convention”, he stated. The International Day is also a solemn occasion to pay tribute to the victims of transnational organized crime, including the brave public servants who have dedicated their lives to the cause. The proclamation is not merely symbolic, but “a tangible manifestation of our unity in confronting the scourge of transnational organized crime with unwavering determination”, he stressed.

In other business, the Assembly also approved the exceptional extension of the term of Gilles Michaud of Canada as Under-Secretary-General for Safety and Security by two years, until 30 June 2026. Further, it appointed Brazil, Finland, the Russian Federation, Senegal, South Sudan and the United States as members of the Board of the 10-Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns, for a term beginning on 21 March 2024 and ending on 20 March 2026.

Facebook Twitter Email Print LinkedIn

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

We're Hiring!
Help Center

Developmental crime prevention

2017, Handbook of Crime Prevention and Community Safety

Related Papers

Ross Homel , Kate Freiberg , Sara Branch

British Journal of Social Work

Kate Freiberg

Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology

alan france , Ross Homel

Troy Allard

European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research

Ross Homel , Joy Clay , Kate Freiberg

The Open Criminology Journal,

Sharon Casey

Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology

There have been few efforts to conceptually and empirically distinguish persistent and chronic offenders, despite the prominence of these concepts in the criminological literature. Research has not yet examined if different childhood risk factors are associated with offenders who have the longest criminal careers (persistent offenders), commit the most offences (chronic offenders), or both (persistent–chronic offenders). We address this gap using data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development. Poverty, poor school attainment, and family stress had a pervasive impact on all forms of offending in correlational analyses. Longer criminal career durations were associated with fewer childhood risk factors than was the case for chronic offenders. Chronic offenders were significantly more likely than persistent offenders to experience many environmental risks in childhood. When controlling for all other risk factors, hyperactivity and parental separation uniquely predicted persiste...

Ross Homel , Kate Freiberg

This chapter provides an overview of developmental or early prevention strategies for crime, antisocial behaviour, and violence in Australia, New Zealand, and internationally, and discusses their effectiveness and potential to be implemented on a large scale in a sustainable fashion. Three flagship programmes are described in detail. These are the Perry Preschool programme, the Nurse-Family Partnership home visiting programme, and the Communities That Care programme. The need for new forms of evidence is emphasised, as well as the need for innovative, large-scale, and sustained prevention strategies through enhanced prevention delivery systems.

RELATED PAPERS

Trends and issues in crime and criminal justice

Trends and Issues …

Jake Najman

The Social Origins of Health and Well-being

Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology

Tara Renae McGee

Ross Homel , Kate Freiberg , Brian Bumbarger

Raymond Corrado

Marianne Junger

Criminology & Public Policy

Matthew Manning

Economic Analysis and Policy

Christina Smith

International Journal of Law and Psychiatry

Bill Hebenton

Justice Quarterly

Gregory Zimmerman

Children and Youth Services Review

Kathleen De Rooy

Australian Journal of Social Issues

Katrina Radford

Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 10509670802143508

Barbara Gant

Georgia Zara

Criminal Justice and Behavior

International Handbook of Criminology

Arjan Blokland

International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies

George Knight , Alexis Piquero

Sara Branch

Professor Stephen Case

Children & Society

Angela Carr

Hans-Jürgen Kerner

Sytske Besemer

Suzanne Vassallo

Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice

Carol Schubert

Marquette Law Review

megan kurlychek

johanna L funk