Protective factors against offending and violence: Results from prospective longitudinal studies

Available online 24 February 2016 Purpose: To describe main findings from a special issue on protective factors against youth offending and violence. Contributors from elevenmajor prospective longitudinal studies were asked to conduct analyses of “direct ameliorative effects” for high-risk individuals (i.e. risk-based protective factors) aswell as analyses of “interactive protective effects” for both high-risk and low-risk individuals (i.e. buffering protective factors). Methods: Beyond variations in analytical strategies that are connected with the actual data available within each longitudinal study, it is a particular strength that contributors were told that they should feel free to present any type of analyses on main and/or interactive effects of protective factors against offending and that all results are important irrespective of whether effects were statistically significant or not. Results: A number of consistent findings emerge across the studies described in the edited volume, such as the notable increase and decrease in offending and violence as a function of cumulative risk and protective factor indices respectively. There are also different protective effects across the various (individual, family, school etc.) domains and at different developmental stages across several studies that might be related to variations in measurement and other methodological features. Conclusions:Most protective factors that emerge from these diverse studies in different geographic and sociopolitical contexts are in concordance with the broader literature on resilience, thus conveying a powerful message of universality of results. Further research on age-specific, gender-specific and context-specific predictors of resilience iswarranted, with findings feeding into future intervention planning through a careful research strategy. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Criminological thinking about the commission of crime is being reshaped by empirical work on why people refrain from crime in the first place. Resilience, the dynamic process of encompassing positive adaptation within the context of significant adversity (Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000), has a long and illustrious historywithin the field of developmental psychopathology. The simultaneous investigation of atypical and normative development, each in the context of the other, and with the study of one informing and enriching the study of the other (Masten, Best, & Garmezy, 1990), constituted a salient founding base in the relevant field. Within developmental and life course criminology, there has been a different research pattern,with an initial focus on risk-based explanatorymodels of why individuals commit crime andwith amuch later focus on why individuals abstain from crime despite childhood adversities (Farrington & Welsh, 2007; Lösel & Farrington, 2012) or on ‘turning points’ that enable individuals to escape their delinquent lifestyles (Laub & Sampson, 1993). We define a direct protective or promotive factor as one that predicts a low probability of offending. We define a risk-based protective factor as one that predicts a low probability of offending among a risk category. Finally, we define an interactive protective (or buffering protective) factor as one that predicts a low probability of offending among a risk category but not among a non-risk category (Lösel & Farrington, 2012; Luthar et al., 2000). We asked researchers from major prospective longitudinal studies to investigate risk-based and interactive protective factors for youth offending and/or violence since direct protective factors had been extensively investigated in a special issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine (Hall et al., 2012), while interactive protective factors had been extensively investigated in a special issue of the Journal of School Violence but with a focus on school aggression and peer victimization (Ttofi, Farrington, & Lösel, 2014). We required that risk and protective factors were measured before offending outcomes. In this special issue, the focus is on protective factors against involvement in crime and violence although, admittedly, research on protective Journal of Criminal Justice 45 (2016) 1–3 ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 1223 767186. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (M.M. Ttofi), [email protected] (D.P. Farrington), [email protected] (A.R. Piquero), [email protected] (M. DeLisi). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2016.02.001 0047-2352/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.