NCJ Number
131771
Journal
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology Volume: 82 Issue: 1 Dated: (Spring 1991) Pages: 119-124
Date Published
1991
Length
6 pages
Annotation
Prospective cohort studies are essential to advance the understanding of the causes of crime and to devise new prevention strategies.
Abstract
Current findings provide new evidence on old topics and raise new issues that criminologists may have neglected. There is almost everything left to learn, but some a priori distinctions are already possible. Numerous research groups emphasize the reciprocal nature of parent-child relationships that help to remove the mistaken views that a child is a blank slate on which family and society write at will and that a family with one bad child must be a wholly bad family. The original cause for delinquency cannot yet be attributed to parental inadequacy nor to innate child deviance. Children whose antisocial behavior begins within the first few years of life usually become the most serious delinquents. Birth cohorts should be studied in conjunction with biomedical as well as sociological instruments; lacking a birth cohort, current researchers can highlight questions that cannot be answered with their available data. Researchers should always keep in mind that they study real human beings, not variables and parameters.