This chapter reviews the effectiveness of preventive interventions in reducing delinquency and later offending. This focus has three key features: interventions are implemented in the early years of the life-course; before children or young people engage in delinquency in the first place; and they are developmental or social in nature. Early childhood prevention programmes are aimed at the improvement of children’s learning, social and emotional competencies, and success over the life-course. The chapter draws upon the highest quality evaluations (i.e., randomised experiments and sound quasi-experiments) and the most rigorous review methods (i.e., systematic and meta-analytic) that include only high-quality studies. It finds that there are many types of effective preventive interventions, including preschool intellectual enrichment, social skills training, parent management training, parent education, anti-bullying programmes, and community-based mentoring. Explanations for effectiveness vary, and reviews have proven helpful for understanding what theoretical orientations and programmatic features are associated with effectiveness.

David P. Farrington was born in 1944 in England and is Emeritus Professor of Criminology at the University of Cambridge. He is director of the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (CSDD), which wasinitiated in 1961 by Donald West with 411 males in London, England, who are still followed. The study advanced knowledge about offending and antisocial behavior; drug and alcohol use; risk factors for aggression, violence, bullying, and intimate partner violence from childhood to adulthood; and the relationship between offending and other life problems, such as in accommodation, relationships, and employment. It has advanced knowledge about risk factors for offending, especially those measured in childhood, such as impulsiveness, low school achievement, poor parental supervision, and disrupted families. It has also advanced knowledge about the effects of life events – such as getting married, becoming separated, and becoming unemployed – on the course of development of offending, as well as the intergenerational transmission of antisocial behavior. Farrington has consistently advocated for early intervention targeting risk factors in order to reduce offending.For example, poor parenting can be targeted using home visiting and parent management training, impulsiveness can be targeted with skills training, and low achievement can be targeted in preschool intellectual enrichment programs.

LONGITUDINAL-EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES

Farrington (1983) and Farrington and Welsh (2005, 2006) reviewed randomized experiments in criminology with the following features: (1) at least fifty units (e.g., persons or areas) were initially assigned to each condition, or at least one hundred units were initially assigned to two experimental conditions; (2) there was an outcome measure of offending; and (3) the experiment was published in English. They found that 122 different experiments of this kind had been published up to 2004.

Farrington (1979) reviewed longitudinal studies in criminology with the following features: (1) at least several hundred persons were initially studied; (2) there were at least two personal contacts with the participants and/or their families, separated by at least five years; (3) there was a measure of offending; and (4) the study was published in English. At that time, only eleven studies of this kind had been published.

Farrington, Ohlin, and Wilson (1986) reviewed the advantages and problems of both experimental and longitudinal studies in criminology and recommended that combined longitudinal- experimental studies should be carried out. For a number of reasons (specified in more detail by Tonry, Ohlin, and Farrington 1991), they recommended that the ideal study should have several assessments (personal contacts) over several years, followed by an experimental intervention, followed by several more assessments over several years. No study of that kind had ever been conducted in criminology, although there had been studies that compared officially recorded offending in a few years before the intervention with officially recorded offending in a few years after (e.g., Empey and Erickson 1972; Empey and Lubeck 1971).

It is a great pleasure to welcome this third edition of Andreas Kapardis' textbook, Psychology and Law. The first and second editions rapidly became recognised as classic texts and have been widely used in undergraduate and postgraduate courses on legal and forensic psychology. My own students have found the previous editions incredibly useful and informative. They have also been of great interest to forensic psychologists and psychiatrists, academic and practising lawyers, law-enforcement personnel, and many practitioners and policy-makers.

This third edition is even better. Although it follows the successful organisation of the second edition, this edition has been completely revised and updated. Professor Kapardis has obviously put a huge amount of work into reading all the latest studies and clearly demonstrates his encyclopaedic knowledge of psychology and law. Useful features include margin notes, case studies and revision questions. Like the previous editions, this book is scholarly, detailed, wide-ranging and up-to-date, but nevertheless very readable. There is no comparable modern textbook with such an international coverage of research on psychology and law.

This international coverage, focusing on the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, reflects the fact that Andreas Kapardis is a very international person. He completed Masters and PhD theses under my supervision at Cambridge University about 25 years ago and then taught and carried out research for a long time in Australia. Now he is pioneering research and teaching in legal and forensic psychology in Cyprus.