Linking Community Factors and Individual Development

During the past 3 years, a research team has surveyed cohorts of youngsters in selected Chicago communities to study the factors that lead to delinquent, criminal, and violent behavior and to understand why some children's antisocial behavior begins early in life and persists throughout much of their lives, while other children go through a short-lived period of delinquent behavior that begins in early adolescence. The NIJ Research Preview, the summary of Linking Community Factors and Individual Development, briefly describes the research, which determines the development sequences that lead some children to engage in antisocial behavior.