Discusses risk and protective factors contributing to child delinquency in the context of developing effective early intervention and protection programs for very young offenders. The article covers individual risk factors, such as antisocial behavior, and emotional factors such as anxiety, hyperactivity, and impulsivity, poor cognitive development, and low intelligence; family risk factors, such as inadequate parenting practices, child maltreatment or abuse, domestic violence, divorce, parental psychopathology, family antisocial behaviors, teenage parenthood, and family structure and size; peer risk factors, including association with deviant peers and fear of peer rejection; school and community risk factors, including failure to bond to school, poor academic performance, low academic aspirations, poverty and disadvantaged or disorganized neighborhoods, concentration of delinquent peer groups, and access to weapons; and effective interventions that address risk and protective factors. Since child delinquency usually stems from a combination of causes that varies from child to child, intervention methods need to account for the wide range of individual, family, peer, school, and community risk factors.
