This article is dedicated to David Farrington who was a giant in criminology and, in particular, a pioneer in studying developmental pathways of delinquent and antisocial behaviour. Numerous studies followed his work. Systematic reviews of his and others' research described between two and seven (mainly 3-5) trajectories. The variation is due to the age of individuals, kind and seriousness of problem behaviour, data sources, assessment methods and cultural context. Reviews stated a lack of research on very early starting problem behaviour, broad developmental outcomes, data from multiple informants and (beyond description) on risk and protective factors or potential causes of the different trajectories.

Schools are widely considered important agents of social control for young people. Consequently, school engagement, disengagement and the school environment are key to understanding behavioural outcomes during adolescence. This study addresses an empirical gap in longitudinal research by examining new types of school engagement, as well as school-level environmental factors.

Understanding changes in aggressive behaviour throughout child development is crucial for identifying effective intervention strategies. This study investigates children's aggressive behaviour in a longitudinal cohort and explores the role of environmental tobacco exposure and fish consumption as potential risk and protective factors, respectively, for persistent aggression in children.

Many studies have found that a small group of chronic offenders is responsible for the majority of crimes and tend to be particularly violent. However, there is a major lack of evidence on chronic offending in low- and middle-income countries; understanding these patterns is especially important in settings with very high levels of serious violence, such as Brazil.

David Farrington (1944-2024) wrote extensively about the methodological rigour and utility of the longitudinal-experimental research design to advance knowledge about the development, explanation, prevention and treatment of antisocial behaviour and criminal offending over the life-course. Founded in 1935, the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study (CSYS) is recognised as the first randomised controlled trial in criminology and the first longitudinal-experimental study in criminology.

Cumulative risk scores predict negative outcomes including antisocial behaviour and mental health. Less work has examined the role of cumulative protection, despite the availability of preventive interventions focused on bolstering protection across domains. Understanding links between cumulative risk and protection measured in childhood and later outcomes can help to guide the timing of prevention programmes.

Foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) is a set of symptoms and signs that may follow from exposure of the unborn child to alcohol during pregnancy. Characterised by cognitive and behavioural impairments, one secondary outcome from FASD, is encounters with the criminal justice system (CJS). In some countries, for example, England and Wales, it seems likely that many cases are missed at this point and, thus, courts are at risk of making unsafe judgements. We could learn a lot from countries where services are generally more used to dealing with FASD. Australia is one such country.

The importation model holds that inmate behaviour is a function of behaviours and thought patterns offenders bring with them into prison from the community. It may also be that offenders export behaviours and thought patterns they develop or refine in prison when they return to the community.

Studies of mattering and delinquency among young people have, to date, focused solely on whether teenagers think that they matter to each other. No one has yet examined the extent to which young people think that they matter to society generally and how this relates to delinquency.

Very high rates of suicide and self-harm in prisons worldwide emphasise the need for evidence-based approaches to prevention. Real world evaluations of organisational changes and service developments within prisons could yield important insights, but there are challenges to achieving this, as we found from an evaluation in a single UK institution.

Whilst there is increasing recognition and interest in how staff who have neurodivergence are represented and contribute to industry, to date, there has been very little exploration of neurodivergence among healthcare staff and none with those working in forensic psychiatric services.

Extended stays in specialist secure hospital units raise ethical concerns. While this topic has been investigated in various countries, there has been little research on it in France.

A substantial number of police-citizen interactions involve a civilian presenting in a mental health crisis, often with law enforcement as the first point of contact. Traditional training methods offer minimal opportunity for police to practice navigating such civilian interactions or to develop and strengthen relevant skills. Virtual reality (VR) offers a promising avenue for addressing this gap by immersing police officers in realistic, controlled environments that could help them to acclimatise to these encounters and understand their own reactions to them.

The term neurodiversity is an umbrella term for any atypical pattern of cognitive ability, including but not confined to neurodevelopmental disorders. Research suggests that several neurodivergent conditions are overrepresented in offender populations, with a recent survey suggesting that over half of those coming into contact with the criminal justice system may have a neurodivergent condition. Considerable effort has been invested in trying to divert people with such conditions out of long-stay hospitals, but nevertheless, a few studies in secure hospitals suggest that while prevalence in hospitals may be lower than in prisons, it is high relative to the general population.

People involved in the criminal justice system are at increased risk of recurring intimate partner violent (IPV) victimisation. Experience of trauma is linked to a variety of negative outcomes, including repeated experiences, so it is important to identify factors that may distinguish non-victims, single-event victims and recurring victims at an early stage as this could hold potential for intervention efforts. Research studies have identified individual-level risk factors for IPV victimisation but have not investigated psychopathy traits or sex differences.

Recent evidence suggests that autonomic nervous system functioning can reflect individual differences in sensitivity to the environment, which in turn moderates the effects of family context on psychopathic and antisocial behaviour. Although some preliminary research suggests that the coordination of the sympathetic (SNS) and parasympathetic (PNS) branches of the autonomic nervous system may reflect sensitivity to environmental influences, the majority of research to date has been limited in its focus on just one branch, and little is known about the effects of parental empathy on a child's psychopathic-like traits. This study aimed to address this gap by examining if the SNS and PNS jointly moderate the prospective contribution of parental empathy to youth psychopathic-like traits.

Although the prevalence is unknown, psychopathy can be a possible co-occurring condition associated with autism especially among forensic populations. However, the relationship between these two conditions remains poorly understood.

Taken together, prior publications on the association between symptoms of depression and anxiety and contact with the criminal justice system (CJS) suggest a bi-directional relationship, but all the studies only focus on one direction in this relationship.