Never too early? Reflections on research and interventions for early developmental prevention of serious harm

Abstract

In the autumn of 2006, the government introduced plans for interventions for early developmental prevention of serious harm. They targeted babies and young children who belonged to dysfunctional families. This signified the drift from a post-crime society to a pre-crime society. This chapter explores some researches on early risk factors associate with antisocial behaviour and early preventive interventions. This research and study on early developmental factors and interventions is useful as it can identify different types of groups of young people who offend and pathways into and out of crime, each with distinguishing characteristics that can be traced back to infancy. This chapter also points out to the findings of these researches and considers some of the practical and ethical problems which they raised. The chapter concludes that the concept of early intervention should not be dismissed and that the most important is the way programmes are developed, and their objectives and outcomes.