The Development of Antisocial Behavior and Crime

This innovative and timely work explores how the developmental criminology paradigm can be applied to understandings beyond criminal careers, to the development of more general antisocial behavior. Importantly, the rich data set from 50-years of cross sectional and longitudinal studies provides replication amongst samples, genders, generations and phases in the life span, from cohorts born in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. This work also provides a rich history about the development of the “Developmental Criminology” paradigm, drawing from developmental psychology, and life-course methodologies in Sociology.

With a 50-year, multigenerational longitudinal dataset (the Montreal Two Sample Four Generational Cross sectionnal and Longitudinal Studies –MTSFGCLS) the author explores the mechanisms of official and self-reported antisocial behavior. It provides insights into not only criminal behavior, but other types of potentially problematic behavior, including drug and alcohol use, risky sexual behavior, conflict with authority and other forms of antisocial behavior; as well as their decline across the life-course. By examining the developmental mechanisms and trajectories of these behaviors, the author proposes a multidisciplinary theory to explain these phenomenons.

This work will be of interested to researchers in Criminology, Sociology and Psychology, particularly within the growing area of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology, as well as related fields such as social work, public health and public policy.

Marc Le Blanc is Emeritus Professor at the University of Montreal's School of Criminology and School of Psychoeducation. He served as Director of Research for Boscoville, a research and development center for adolescents with problem behavior. He has been involved in fundamental and applied research concerning juvenile delinquency for the last 50 years and in promoting a developmental approach to the study of crime. He has also worked on the ecology of delinquency in Montreal, changes in the phenomenon of delinquency over the past 50 years, the gang phenomenon, substance use and female delinquency.

His work in applied criminology concerns the evaluation of treatments for juvenile delinquents and the functioning on juvenile justice. He developed and validated an instrument for the evaluation of juvenile delinquents based on his integrative theory. He has also implemented experimental differential treatments (cognitive behavioral and developmental) in secure and open units for serious delinquents. Professor Le Blanc has also been engaged in a consultative capacity to various governmental and nongovernmental organizations in Canada, America and Europe.

Professor Le Blanc was elected to the Social Sciences Academy of the Royal Society of Canada and is a Beccaria, Killam, deToqueville-Beaumont and Sellin-Glueck Fellow. He received a lifetime achievement award from the Government of Québec and the American society of criminology and a Doctorate Honorius causa from University of Liège.  He has contributed to ongoing debates about paradigmatic topics such as developmental criminology, advanced criminological theory by constructing multilayered developmental theories of self- and social control, and supplemented empirical knowledge through cross-sectional and longitudinal research.