Delinquent Development, the Cambridge Study

David P. Farrington

The Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development is a 40-year follow-up study of South London males (see Farrington, 2003). It was begun by Donald West in 1961; I joined him to work on the study in 1969 and took charge of it in 1982. A main aim of the study was to describe the development of criminal behavior in urban males and to establish how far there was continuity or discontinuity over time in antisocial behavior. A second aim was to investigate why offending began, why it continued, and why it ended, to see how far offending could be predicted in advance, and to establish the relative importance of different predictors of offending. A third aim was to study the correlates of criminal behavior at different ages and the effects of life events on the course of development. Generally, we were not concerned to test one particular theory, but to test ...

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