School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith University, Southport, QLD, Australia.
Griffith Criminology Institute, Mt Gravatt, QLD, Australia.
J Interpers Violence. 2024 Jun;39(11-12):2708-2732. doi: 10.1177/08862605231223468. Epub 2024 Jan 22.
The relationship between childhood maltreatment and subsequent offending/victimization is well established. However, the magnitude of this relationship for different levels of child protection services (CPS) involvement is poorly understood, due to measurement issues, lack of longitudinal data, and reliance on reports of substantiated maltreatment, which can underestimate the impact of maltreatment. This study examined associations between CPS involvement during childhood (ages 0 to <11 years) and police services contact (as a victim and/or a person of interest) for criminal incidents in early adolescence (11 to ~14 years), differentiated according to levels of CPS involvement (i.e., no risk of significant harm [non-ROSH], unsubstantiated ROSH, substantiated ROSH, and out-of-home care; each examined relative to no CPS contact). Data for 71,465 children were drawn from the New South Wales Child Development Study, an intergenerational, longitudinal investigation that uses administrative records from CPS and police alongside other health, justice, and education data. Multinomial regression analyses were conducted to determine associations between increasing levels of CPS involvement and police contact as a victim only, a person of interest only, and as both victim and person of interest while accounting for covariates (i.e., child's sex, Aboriginal, and/or Torres Strait Islander background, socioeconomic status, maternal age at child's birth, and parental offending history). Children exposed to any of the four levels of CPS involvement had higher odds of police contact, relative to children with no CPS involvement. Odds ratios were higher for contact with police as both a victim and a person of interest, compared to police contact as a victim or a person of interest only. These findings highlight that children with even unsubstantiated CPS reports (i.e., non-ROSH and unsubstantiated ROSH reports) are at heightened risk of police contact compared to children who are unknown to CPS, underlining the need to support all families in contact with CPS.
儿童期虐待与随后的犯罪/受害之间的关系已得到充分证实。然而，由于测量问题、缺乏纵向数据以及依赖经证实的虐待报告，人们对不同程度的儿童保护服务（CPS）介入与这种关系的大小了解甚少，这些报告可能低估了虐待的影响。本研究考察了儿童时期（0 至<11 岁）CPS 介入程度与青少年早期（11 至~14 岁）刑事事件中与警方的联系（作为受害者和/或嫌疑人）之间的关联，根据 CPS 介入程度（即无重大伤害风险[非 ROSH]、未证实 ROSH、经证实 ROSH 和家庭外照顾；每种情况均与无 CPS 接触进行比较）进行区分。来自新南威尔士州儿童发展研究的数据被用于 71465 名儿童，这是一项代际纵向研究，使用了 CPS 和警方的行政记录以及其他健康、司法和教育数据。进行多项二项式回归分析，以确定随着 CPS 介入程度的增加，与仅作为受害者、仅作为嫌疑人或同时作为受害者和嫌疑人与警方联系的关联，同时考虑了协变量（即儿童的性别、原住民和/或托雷斯海峡岛民背景、社会经济地位、母亲在孩子出生时的年龄以及父母的犯罪记录）。与没有 CPS 介入的儿童相比，暴露于四种 CPS 介入程度之一的儿童与警方联系的可能性更高。与仅作为受害者或嫌疑人与警方联系相比，作为受害者和嫌疑人与警方联系的几率更高。这些发现强调，即使是未证实的 CPS 报告（即非 ROSH 和未证实 ROSH 报告）的儿童与 CPS 不了解的儿童相比，与警方联系的风险更高，这突显出需要支持与 CPS 接触的所有家庭。
