Background In July of 1992, approximately sixty scholars and researchers met for a week at the "Fritz Erler Akademie" in Freudenstadt, Germany, to participate in a workshop entitled "Cross-National Lon gitudinal Research on Human Development and Criminal Behavior". The participants represented 15 nations and 45 universities and research centers. Although longitudinal research in criminology has a long history, this workshop represented the first one in the field of criminology in which it was attempted to get together the main scholars in this field from around the world. The largest group of the workshop represented American scholars (19), a reflection of the fact that longitudi nal research in criminology is predominantly conducted in North America. This volume is the result of the workshop process and in particular of the invitations to participants to prepare pre or conference papers. The chapters in this volume were selected from a larger set of pre- or conference papers. As workshop conveners and volume editors, it falls to us to set some of the context for this enter prise. Longitudinal research in criminology became a major approach after the publication of the land mark study by Wolfgang, Figlio, and Sellin "Delinquency in a Birth Cohort" in 1972. Around the same time, when Wolfgang, Figlio, and Sellin started their Philadelphia cohort study, were longi tudinal studies, although different in scope and aim, launched by Shannon in the USA, West in England, Janson in Sweden, and Goppinger in Germany.

Inhalt
I: Lessons of Longitudinal Research.- Natural Histories of Delinquency.- II: Recent Longitudinal Studies Around the World.- Criminal Careers in London and Stockholm: A Cross-National Comparative Study.- A Longitudinal Analysis of Juvenile Arrest Histories of the 1970 Birth Cohort in Japan.- Juvenile Justice and Child Welfare: Longitudinal Research in the State of Michigan.- Methodological Annotations on Retrospection in Criminological Research.- Determinants of Patterns of Recidivism: Some Results of Survival Analysis Based on Official Crime Records of the Swiss Canton Jura.- Measures of Escalation and their Self and Social Control Predictors.- Family Socialization and Antisocial Behavior: Searching for Causal Relationships in Longitudinal Research.- Longitudinal Research in Criminology: Promise and Practice.- Examining Developmental Trajectories in Delinquency Using Accelerated Longitudinal Research Designs.- Neighborhood Context and Delinquency: A Longitudinal Analysis.- Initiation of Drug Selling and Its Relationship with Illicit Drug Use and Serious Delinquency in Adolescent Boys.- The Probability and Timing of Rearrests for Serious Violent Crimes: Some Descriptive Patterns in Individual Arrest Histories and their Policy Implications.- Self-Reported and Officially Defined Offenses in the 1958 Philadelphia Birth Cohort.- Protective Effects of Social Recources in Adolescents at High Risk for Antisocial Behavior.- Desistance from a Delinquent Way of Life?.- III: Clinical Approaches, Deterrence, and Socio-Economic Development.- Longitudinal Research from the Point of View of Clinical Criminology.- Criminological Research: From Cohort Studies To Clinical Epidemiology.- Identification and Interpersonal Maturity: Contribution to a Developmental Approach of Juvenile Delinquency.- Evidence for the Adoption of a Learning Theory Approach to Criminal Deterrence: A Preliminary Study.- Development and Crime: An Explanatory Study in Yugoslavia.- IV: Future Directions of Longitudinal Research.- Communities Change, Too.- Next Steps in Criminal Career Research.- A Case for a Longitudinal Study.- Towards Comparative Societal Longitudinal Studies.- Epilogue: Workshop and Plenary Discussions, and Future Directions.