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CRIMINOLOGY

NATURE OR CRIME-HISTORY-CAUSES-STATISTICS

Posts in Crime Prevention
Developmental Crime Prevention Manifesto—or “Saving Children from a Life of Crime” 2.0: The 2024 David P. Farrington Lecture

By Brandon C. Welsh

Early developmental crime prevention is an important component of an overall strategy to reduce crime. Key features include a commitment to prevention in the first instance—intervening before a delinquent act has been committed and before a child has contact with the justice system—and a larger focus on improving the life chances of at-risk children and families, extending well beyond delinquency or criminal offending. The main aim of this article is to set out an agenda for action— a manifesto of sorts—to advance developmental crime prevention, with a special focus on the early stages of the life-course. Structured as a ten-point plan and organized around three core areas (policy directions, research priorities, and outreach), the agenda is designed to bring attention to what I view as the most important and pressing matters confronting early developmental crime prevention today. The good news is that the groundwork has been started on many fronts, with some successes and a great deal of promise. David Farrington’s research and scholarly contributions fgure prominently in this work, and this article also serves as a remembrance of David Farrington (1944–2024) and a way to celebrate his enduring life-work to help build a safer, more just society.

Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology (2024) 10:457–476 

The Effect of Education Policy on Crime: An Intergenerational Perspective

By Costas Meghir Marten Palme Marieke Schnabel

We study the intergenerational effect of education policy on crime. We use Swedish administrative data that links outcomes across generations with crime records and we show that the comprehensive school reform, gradually implemented between 1949 and 1962, reduced conviction rates both for the generation directly affected by the reform and for their sons. The reduction in conviction rates occurred across many types of crime. Key mediators for this reduction in the child generation are an increase in education and a decline in crime amongst their fathers.

COWLES FOUNDATION DISCUSSION PAPER NO. 2356, New Haven, CT: Yale University, 2023. 40p.