One of the primary areas for applying biosocial crime theory today is in crime prevention.

Early criminological work argued that deviant behavior occurred as a result of biological or mental predispositions, which led to proposals for crime prevention that involved eugenics (Rafter, 1997, Rafter, 2008, Vaske et al., 2011). However, these proposals are no longer accepted or even considered by criminologists, who have been sensitive to the negative implications of using biology to explain crime. As a result of increased recognition of human rights, biologically-oriented criminology and crime control policies lost favor in the early to mid-20th century.

To this day, many criminologists remain wary of any theoretical or policy work that carries the slightest hint of biology. However, criminological research examining biological factors has re-emerged with new sophistication and attention to the importance of social context (Beauchaine et al., 2008, Rafter, 2008, Walsh and Beaver, 2009a, Walsh and Beaver, 2009b). Additionally, in recent years, a stronger focus on crime prevention has emerged, with a growing literature on developmental crime prevention. A large part of this literature is concerned with addressing biological/psychological risk factors early in life (see Farrington and Welsh, 2007, Tremblay and Craig, 1995). Thus, biologically-based crime prevention (while not currently so labeled) has re-entered the criminological literature.

In this article, we attempt to show that this new biological crime prevention is vastly different from the biological strategies of the past. Far from advocating unethical eugenic measures, this work focuses on improving the environment to promote healthy biological development early in life. Thus, in a sense, this crime prevention work is integrative in recognizing the import of both the environment and the body. In what follows, we introduce the concept of developmental crime prevention, and then discuss the biological or psychological risk factors for offending that developmental prevention programs may influence.

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