Publication Title

Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

Document Type

Article

Department or Program

Sociology

Publication Date

7-28-2025

Keywords

developmental crime prevention, early intervention, life-course development, public policy, social impact

Abstract

Preventing the development of criminal potential in young people is an important component of broader crime reduction strategies. A key feature of developmental crime prevention is a comprehensive effort to improve the life chances of at-risk children and families, and there is evidence that doing so improves long-term life-course outcomes like physical health, mental health, education, and employment. We assess available research evidence from 12 high-quality studies of developmental crime prevention initiatives and find that extensive use of multimodal interventions helps to foster cumulative protection over the life course, that there are significant improvements in other outcomes over the life course, that there are promising signs of intergenerational transmission of the intervention effects, and that there is strong support for these sorts of interventions from the perspective of benefit-cost analysis. We also discuss implications for public policy and research.

Comments

Original version is available from the publisher at: https://doi.org/10.1177/00027162251341938

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Copyright Note

© 2025 by The American Academy of Political and Social Science.

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