Child maltreatment and criminal convictions in youth: The role of gender, ethnicity and placement experiences in an Australian population

The maltreatment-violence link: Exploring the role of maltreatment experiences and other individual and social risk factors among young people who offend

“…Although placement appears to be more consequential for violent offending among boys in this study, the potentially negative or protective effects for females need further consideration. Consistent with emerging trends in the international literature (Goodkind et al, 2012), two other Australian studies have found that placement in residential care is more consequential in the offending behavior of females Malvaso, Delfabbro, & Day, 2017a); however, the present study suggests that these associations do not necessarily help to discriminate between female offenders with and without violent crime convictions. It might be that placement plays a role in the initiation of offending for females, but is not related to the perpetration of violent crime.…”

“…Some of these studies have estimated that up to 89 per cent of detained or incarcerated youth have histories of maltreatment or placement (Halemba & Lord, 2005;Halemba, Siegel, Lord, & Zawacki, 2004). In Australia, a recent study reported that just over 70 per cent of young people detained in secure care had a child protection history, defined as notifications or substantiations for abuse and/or neglect or a history of placement in OHC (Malvaso, Delfabbro & Day, 2017a).…”

Hearing and justice: The link between hearing impairment in early childhood and youth offending in Aboriginal children living in remote communities of the Northern Territory, Australia

“…Therefore, we chose the explanatory variables that were available close to age 10, to identify opportunities for agencies to intervene to prevent first delinquency. These are the proxy variables for the underlying factors of delinquency, in which the links to delinquency have been documented in previous literature (Abrams and Freisthler 2010; Bender 2012; Bernburg and Thorlindsson 2007; He et al 2019b; Henry et al 2012; Hirschfield and Gasper 2011; Huang and Ryan 2014; Leiber et al 2009; Li et al 2011; Mack et al 2007; Malvaso et al 2016, 2017; Wells and Rankin 1991): Child maltreatment experience (early and middle childhood) was constructed from the child protection data based on the primary types of child maltreatment notification(s) before entering Year 7 at school. This is an ordinal variable with six mutually exclusive categories: no notification of maltreatment, neglect only, emotional abuse only, physical abuse only, sexual abuse only, and multi-type maltreatment (defined as two or more types of maltreatment).…”

“…However, worldwide, it has been claimed that the CJS is currently ‘ill prepared to accommodate’ people with HI who are ‘both victims and victimizers’ (O’Rourke et al 2013)—a vulnerable population which has ‘multiple and complex needs ’ (Rosengard et al 2007) and have often ‘experienced various forms of traumatisation, and oppression’, and are at risk of being ‘further mistreated within the CJS’ (O’Rourke et al 2013). Previous studies have demonstrated an association between HI and child maltreatment, and between child maltreatment and delinquency, however there have been no large-scale studies that have investigated the link between HI and juvenile delinquency in the Australian Aboriginal population (He et al 2019b; Malvaso et al 2016; Malvaso et al 2017; Su et al 2019b). These types of studies are important to inform effective prevention and early intervention strategies for juvenile delinquency including in the NT where Aboriginal children comprise about 40% of all NT children (Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 2014, 2016) and are over-represented in both child protection notifications (80%) and in youth detention centres (96%) (AIHW 2017b, 2018).…”

Opportunities for Prevention: A Data-Linkage Study to Inform A Public Health Response to Youth Offending in The Northern Territory, Australia

“…Over the past two decades, there has been a growing call for responses to young people who offend which focus on primary prevention and early support in childhood rather than crisis management and intervention after offending has occurred [1][2][3][4]. Calls for reform have been supported by a body of research that has demonstrated a greater risk of youth offending among children who have suffered chronic or recurrent child maltreatment [5][6][7]. However, while these studies provide valuable insights into the child maltreatment experience of children and their interaction with the youth justice system, the focus on children reported to the child protection system (CPS) for child maltreatment is insu cient to inform a comprehensive whole-of-population perspective on the risk of offending for children with varying levels of CPS contact.…”