This paper gives an overview of theoretical concepts in criminology as well as the results of empirical research on the risk and protective developmental factors that are considered to be decisive in the dynamics of criminogenesis. Theoretical approaches supported by empirical, longitudinal data and multivariate statistical models that have been developed over the last four decades have shown that antisocial behaviour is determined by multiple endogenous and exogenous factors, that there are links between independent factors and that it is useful to control them because of possible interdependence. In this respect, developmental trajectories are significant towards the severe forms of antisocial behaviour through the identification of earlier developmental risk factors leading to serious forms of crime. The homotypic continuity of delinquent behaviour implies the continuity of the same delinquency forms over time, while heterotypic continuity concerns various types of antisocial behaviour that are effectively developmentally related. Different patterns of the offenders’ developmental history are elaborated and directions of the development of their delinquent behaviour are being problematized. Thus, the paper presents the integral three-dimensional cumulative model of serious crime offenders encompassing pathways that precede the escalation of an individual towards serious property crime and violence, differences between individuals and their exposure to risk and protective factors that lasts from birth, childhood, adolescence and early adulthood, developmental accumulation of risk and protective factors through time and the existence of dose-response relationship, taking into account both the number and the intensity of risk and protection factors for later severe delinquency and violence.