The list of risk factors for future offending produced by risk factor research (RFR) provides academics, policymakers, and practitioners with a ready set of targets for intervention. The potential of RFR to identify the causes and predictors of delinquency and, simultaneously, to offer a cure, has proven to be irresistible. With power and influence, RFR has come to dominate much juvenile criminology across the Western world. The intent of this book is to expose the body of RFR to critical explanation and appraisal by charting its historical development and by subjecting RFR to a sustained, judicious and balanced evaluation. Divided into seven chapters, the opening chapter sets out and evaluates the methodological premises of RFR. The second chapter focuses on the origins and development of RFR. In the third chapter, the theoretical bases, methodologies, and empirical claims of longitudinal RFR are evaluated. Chapter 4 places the aims, methods, analyses, findings, and conclusions of several notable cross-sectional studies under the microscope. In chapter 5, the global movement of RFR is explored. Chapter 6 outlines and evaluates the way in which the findings from RFR have been applied to work with young offenders and young people considered to be at risk of offending in England and Wales. The final chapter draws together the common critical themes of the previous chapters and evaluates them in relation to the methodologies, analyses, and conclusions of RFR. The book concludes by tracing the authors' journey through the process of evaluating RFR and questioning the capability of RFR to identify valid, meaningful measures of risk and to explain the relationship risk and offending. Bibliography and index