2013
David P. Farrington
Crime patterns, its causes, and measures against crime.
Farrington was lauded by the jury for his six decades of research, conducted with hundreds of collaborators from around the world. His work began with the 411 London males enrolled at early adolescence in the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, leading to massively important insights about different patterns of offending and desistance. He went on to the development and testing of many theories on the causes of crime and the effects of anti-crime measures.David P. Farrington
Born 1944 in the UK. David P. Farrington was professor at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) at the time of the award.
Produced a wide array of evidence that crime prevention can pay for itself, and that criminologists can continue building that evidence for the future.Produced a wide array of evidence that crime prevention can pay for itself, and that criminologists can continue building that evidence for the future.
Crime prevention starts in childhood
David P. Farrington was awarded the 2013 Stockholm Prize in Criminology for his research on how crime develops over time and how early intervention can reduce the risk of future criminal behaviour – both for people and places.
He influenced policy makers around the world by uniquely combining his own research findings with other research, supporting many major policy conclusions.
Early intervention with at-risk young people pays off handsomely
Farrington has focused his crime prevention policy recommendations on four key findings: 1) risk and protective factors for future criminality appear very early in life; 2) high-risk children can be helped basically from birth; 3) many programmes for children under ten are highly effective; 4) investment in early intervention programmes to prevent crime saves a tremendous amount of taxpayer money.
To reach these conclusions, Farrington conducted systematic reviews of research on English risk and protective factors indicating the likelihood of children becoming adult criminals. He has created a list of effective policy options to save money related to future crime through early crime prevention efforts. In his role as the founding chair of the International Campbell Crime and Justice Group, he launched an ongoing process of recruiting and reviewing criminologists world-wide to ensure high quality reviews of the effects of specific policies. The high readership and citation count of the Campbell reviews, now published in its own journal, provide strong evidence of the institution Farrington built with the next generations of criminologists. He set an example of breadth in his own reviews with colleagues of the effects on crime of such public prevention measures as intensified street lighting and monitoring by CCTV cameras. He also promoted research on the costs of crime, so that crime prevention effects could be presented by a common currency of cost reduction resulting from crime prevention alternatives.
Unique combination of research
Farrington is rarely recognized as an experimental criminologist, even though he helped to create the field with his 1983 systematic review of randomised controlled field trials. That review led to major investments in experiments for policing, prisons, probation, courts, and public place prevention – as well as the founding of the Journal of Experimental Criminology. Farrington uniquely combined his own original research with reviews of other research to influence governments around the world to use evidence-based crime prevention measures. He has also been influential in supporting the funding of evidence-based governmental programmes.