Saving Children from a Life of Crime: Early Risk Factors and Effective Interventions

ISBN-13: 9780195378993 / Angielski / Miękka / 2008 / 248 str.

Farington

Opis

After decades of rigorous study in the United States and across the Western world, a great deal is known about the early risk factors for offending. High impulsiveness, low attainment, criminal parents, parental conflict, and growing up in a deprived, high-crime neighborhood are among the most important factors. There is also a growing body of high quality scientific evidence on the effectiveness of early prevention programs designed to prevent children from embarking on a life of crime.

Drawing on the latest evidence, Saving Children from a Life of Crime is the first book to assess the early causes of offending and what works best to prevent it. Preschool intellectual enrichment, child skills training, parent management training, and home visiting programs are among the most effective early prevention programs. Criminologists David Farrington and Brandon Welsh also outline a policy strategy--early prevention--that uses this current research knowledge and brings into sharper focus what America's national crime fighting priority ought to be.

At a time when unacceptable crime levels in America, rising criminal justice costs, and a punitive crime policy have spurred a growing interest in the early prevention of delinquency, Farrington and Welsh here lay the groundwork for change with a comprehensive national prevention strategy to save children from a life of crime.

Recenzje

Farrington and Welsh have produced a timely and important work for all self-respecting democracies. Every careful student of human development since Plato understands that preventing crime as a way of life starts at conception. Farrington and Welsh offer the up-to-date knowledge needed to change outdated policies. We cannot afford to continue to lock up offenders as if we were still in the early 19th century. Giving support to at-risk families and children is the only rational and humane way of dealing with crime as a way of life. This book should be mandatory for all social science students and policy makers.

O autorze

David P. Farrington is Professor of Psychological Criminology in the Institute of Criminology, Cambridge University. Brandon C. Welsh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, University of Massachusetts Lowell.