Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, 816 17th Street, P.O. Box 2296, College of Criminal Justice, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX 77341-2296, USA.
Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Institute for Legal Studies in Criminal Justice, 816 17th Street, P.O. Box 2296, College of Criminal Justice, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX 77341-2296, USA.
Int J Law Psychiatry. 2019 May-Jun;64:219-229. doi: 10.1016/j.ijlp.2019.03.007. Epub 2019 May 10.
Laws that mandate reporting of child abuse have stirred global controversy. Mandatory reporting to authorities for different types of child abuse includes physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical neglect, educational neglect, and emotional neglect. While the definition of child abuse differs from jurisdiction-to-jurisdiction, which covers a wide spectrum of abuse and maltreatment, employees who work in professions required to report child abuse include health care workers, educational employees, social workers, religious leaders, employees of divisions of child protective services, criminal justice and other governmental personnel, and child care professionals. Lack of a uniform definition of what constitutes child abuse causes problems for mandatory reporters, ranging from false arrest and malicious prosecution to failure to investigate ongoing child abuse. This article reviews international norms associated with mandatory reporting of child abuse and assesses court cases within the United States that involve mandatory reporting, identifying important issues and underlying problems with the current mandatory reporting system; it concludes with policy recommendations and suggestions for future research.
法律规定必须报告儿童虐待事件，这在全球范围内引发了争议。强制向当局报告的儿童虐待类型包括身体虐待、性虐待、情感虐待、身体忽视、教育忽视和情感忽视。虽然儿童虐待的定义因司法管辖区而异，涵盖了广泛的虐待和虐待行为，但需要报告儿童虐待的职业员工包括医疗保健工作者、教育工作者、社会工作者、宗教领袖、儿童保护服务部门的员工、刑事司法和其他政府人员以及儿童保育专业人员。缺乏对构成儿童虐待的统一定义给强制报告者带来了问题，从错误逮捕和恶意起诉到未能调查正在发生的儿童虐待。本文回顾了与儿童虐待强制报告相关的国际规范，并评估了美国涉及强制报告的案例，确定了现行强制报告制度存在的重要问题和潜在问题；最后提出了政策建议和对未来研究的建议。
