Pathways From Child Maltreatment to Juvenile Offending

• NCJ Number: 198932
• Author(s): Anna Stewart; Susan Dennison; Elissa Waterson
• Date Published: October 2002
• Length: 6 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: Criminology Research Council
• Sale Source: Australian Institute of Criminology
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: Australia
• Note: Australian Institute of Criminology Trends & Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice, October 2002; downloaded February 3, 2003.

Annotation

This Australian research examined how child maltreatment may be linked to the abused child's subsequent juvenile offending.

Abstract

Children born in Queensland in 1983 who had recorded contact with Queensland's Department of Families child protection system and/or the juvenile justice system were included in the study. These data were collected in 2000, when the children had turned 17 years old and were no longer under the jurisdiction of the Department of Families. Approximately 10 percent of the 41,700 children born in Queensland in 1983 came into contact with the Department of Families by the time they were 17 years old. Approximately 5 percent of this cohort had a court appearance for a proven offense. The data set contained 6,541 child records; 647 children had both a child protection record and an offending record; and 1,916 children had only an offending record. Children with one or more substantiated maltreatment notifications were more likely (17 percent) than children with no substantiated maltreatment (10 percent) to have a later offending record. This lends some support to the hypothesis that maltreated children are more likely to offend than children for whom there is no evidence of maltreatment; however, there was no opportunity to control for variables such as socioeconomic status. Physical abuse and neglect were significantly predictive of subsequent juvenile offending, but sexual and/or emotional abuse were not. Twenty-five percent of male maltreated children were more likely to engage in subsequent offending compared with 11 percent of females. Maltreated Indigenous children were four times more likely to offend than non-Indigenous children. Twenty-six percent of maltreated children who were placed outside the home subsequently offended at least once, compared with 13 percent of children who were never placed outside the home. The study concluded that by detecting and preventing the recurrence of maltreatment, significant benefits in crime reduction and beneficial outcomes for abused children can be achieved. 5 tables and 21 references