Early Prevention of Adult Antisocial Behaviour

Description

This book presents a comprehensive and up-to-date summary of how well adult crime, antisocial behaviour and antisocial personality disorder can be prevented by interventions applied early in life. It reviews important childhood risk and protective factors for these adult outcomes and the alternative strategies of primary prevention (targeting the whole community) and secondary prevention (targeting persons identified as high risk) are discussed. The book also contains extensive information about prevention programmes in pregnancy and infancy, pre-school programmes, parent education and training programmes, and school programmes (including the prevention of bullying). There is special emphasis on preventing the intergenerational transmission of antisocial behaviour by focussing on family violence, and a special review of whether risk factors and prevention programmes have different effects for females compared to males. Cost-benefit analyses of early prevention programmes are also reviewed, leading to the conclusion that adult antisocial behaviour can be prevented both effectively and cost-efficiently.

David P. Farrington has published extensively and is the first non-American to have been President of the American Society for Criminology. He is also a Fellow of the British Academy and the Academy of Medical Sciences. Jeremy W. Coid is Professor of Forensic Psychiatry at St Bartholomew's Hospital and the Royal London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary College, University of London. His area of research is epidemiology of antisocial and high-risk behaviour, with a special interest in personality disorder. He is the author of Psychopathic and Antisocial Personality Disorders: Treatment and Research Issues (with B. Dolan, 1993).

'I thought the chapters in this book covered the topic comprehensively and at a uniformly high level. The book would be indispensable to anyone working in research in this field and most helpful to clinicians interested in prevention.' Psychological Medicine