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Preventing Early Conduct Problems and Later Delinquency

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Handbook of Juvenile Forensic Psychology and Psychiatry

Abstract

The annual cost of youth violence in the USA exceeds $158 billion when accounting for direct and indirect effects of violence on areas such as medical burden, work productivity, and quality of life (Center for Disease Control and Prevention 2008). Therefore, preventing youth violence and antisocial behavior should be a high priority for researchers and policy makers. Research suggests that approximately 80–85% of young children desist from disobedience, temper tantrums, physical aggression, and other behaviors that are relatively normative during early childhood (Nagin and Tremblay 1999; Shaw et al. 2003). However, approximately 5–10% of children show persistently high levels of conduct problems that may lead to antisocial behavior and violence in adolescence (Moffitt et al. 2002; Shaw et al. 2003). Although a pattern of “late-starting” or “adolescence-limited” antisocial behavior initially emerging during adolescence has been shown to have more serious consequences for adult functioning than originally thought, a pattern of “early-starting” or “life-course-persistent” conduct problems is associated with an even more persistent and serious course of antisocial behavior from middle childhood through adolescence and young adulthood (Moffitt 1993; Patterson et al. 1992). For example, young men who followed the “adolescence-limited” trajectory of antisocial behavior reported similar levels of psychiatric symptoms as men who followed the “life-course-persistent” trajectory (Moffitt et al. 2002). However, men who followed the “life-course-persistent” trajectory were still two to three times more likely to receive a criminal conviction as adults compared to men who followed the “adolescence-limited” trajectory. Therefore, identifying risk factors that are associated with early-starting patterns of conduct problems is essential for the health and well-being of youth and other members of society.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Wayne State University, 5057 Woodward, 7th Floor, Detroit, MI, 48202, USA

    Christopher J. Trentacosta PhD

  2. University of Pittsburgh, SENSQ 4101, Pittsburgh, PA, 15260, USA

    Daniel S. Shaw PhD

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Correspondence to Christopher J. Trentacosta PhD .

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  1. Yale University, S. Frontage Road 230, New Haven, 06519, Connecticut, USA

    Elena L. Grigorenko

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Trentacosta, C.J., Shaw, D.S. (2012). Preventing Early Conduct Problems and Later Delinquency. In: Grigorenko, E. (eds) Handbook of Juvenile Forensic Psychology and Psychiatry. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0905-2_20

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