Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Early Developmental Crime Prevention and Social Impact over the Life Course
2025-07-28
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.