Developmental Crime Prevention
Definition
Interventions targeting risk and protective factors at key life-course stages, particularly early childhood and adolescence, to reduce the probability that an individual will develop a persistent offending pattern.
- Field
- Criminology, social prevention
- Target
- Risk and protective factors across the life course
- Key stages
- Early childhood and adolescence
- Goal
- Reduce likelihood of persistent offending later in life
Common questions
How does developmental crime prevention differ from situational crime prevention?+
Situational approaches target the immediate opportunity for a specific crime, such as better lighting or locks, while developmental approaches intervene much earlier in a person's life, addressing factors like family stability, school engagement, or early behavioural problems, aiming to reduce the chance the person offends at all rather than blocking one opportunity.
What kind of programmes fall under developmental crime prevention?+
Examples include early childhood home-visiting programmes, preschool enrichment, parenting support, and school-based social skills training, all aimed at strengthening protective factors or reducing known risk factors, such as harsh parenting or truancy, before patterns of offending have a chance to form.
Related terms
- Community Safety Partnership
- A multi-agency governance arrangement that brings together police, local government, health, housing, education, and voluntary bodies to share data and coordinate responses...
- Displacement
- The relocation of crime following a prevention intervention. Can take five forms: territorial (to another place), temporal (to another time), target (to...
- Neighbourhood Regeneration
- Physical, economic, and social improvement of deprived or high-crime areas, including housing renovation, public space design, employment schemes, and community organisation, as...
- Primary, Secondary, Tertiary Prevention
- A public-health framework applied to crime: primary targets the whole population, secondary targets individuals or communities at elevated risk, tertiary targets known...
- Social Crime Prevention
- Strategies that target the developmental, social, and environmental conditions that produce offending, rather than the immediate situational opportunity. Operates upstream of any...