Abstract
This chapter tests and refines a developmental taxonomy of antisocial behavior, which proposed two primary hypothetical prototypes: life-course persistent offenders whose antisocial behavior begins in childhood and continues worsening thereafter, versus adolescence-limited offenders whose antisocial behavior begins in adolescence and desists in young adulthood (RO221). Two previous reports have described clinically defined groups of childhood-onset and adolescence-onset antisocial youths in the Dunedin birth cohort during childhood (RO378) and at age 18 (RO274). The most recent follow-up of the cohort was at age 26, and this chapter describes how the two groups of males fared in adulthood. In so doing, the authors test an hypothesis critical to the theory: that childhood-onset, but not adolescent-onset, antisocial behavior is associated in adulthood with antisocial personality, violence, and continued serious antisocial behavior that expands into maladjustment in work-life and victimization of partners and children.