This work addresses the psychologically relevant causes of persistent antisocial behavior and concrete prevention strategies to tackle childhood behavioral disorders and subsequent antisocial behavior. The foundations for this are psychological stress theory, environmental psychology, and recent developmental psychopathological findings that have received little attention in German criminological literature so far. From the perspective of developmental psychopathology, persistent antisocial behavior begins in early childhood with behavioral disorders and continues into adulthood, while the majority of youth crime is merely a developmentally temporary phenomenon. The research findings presented in this work and their significance for practical work indicate that the primary focus should be on risk reduction for child development and the prevention of childhood behavioral disorders. Therefore, primary and secondary prevention, involving families, should be given greater importance in the future than it currently holds.