From Maltreated Child to Juvenile Offender
Study Suggests Link Between Child Abuse and Future Delinquency
Sep 29, 2009
Child maltreatment, which includes both child abuse and child neglect, is a major social problem. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, over a million children are victims of maltreatment annually. Over half a million children suffer serious injuries, and about 1500 children die, making child maltreatment the leading cause of deaths from injuries in children over a year old. In addition, child abuse is thought to have many harmful long-term consequences (Understanding Child Maltreatment, CDC Fact Sheet 2006).
In a 2007 National Institute of Justice article entitled “Does Child Abuse Cause Crime?” authors Janet Currie and Erdal Tekin focused on the effect of child maltreatment on crime using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health).
The authors found that child maltreatment roughly doubles the probability that an individual will engage in many types of crime. This is true even if we compare twins, one of whom was maltreated when the other one was not. It is useful to put this result in perspective by comparing it to other estimates of the effects of factors related to crime. For example, using time-series data from New York, researchers found that a single percentage point decline in unemployment generates only a 2.2 percentage point decline in burglaries, and that a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage leads to about a 3.5 percent decrease in robberies in New York City.
Firearm Violence
Exposure to firearm violence approximately doubles the probability that an adolescent will engage in serious violence over the subsequent two years, so that effects of maltreatment are similar to those of exposure to gun violence. Researchers found that having access to a gun at home increased the propensity to commit a variety of crimes, by about 30 percent among adolescents.
Link Between Abuse and Delinquency
Children who experience maltreatment start engaging in crime earlier. Researchers found that those with a history of being abused or neglected “were younger at first arrest (mean age 16.5 years versus 17.3 years), committed nearly twice as many offenses (mean age 2.4 versus 1.4), and were arrested more frequently (17 percent of abused and neglected cases versus 9 percent of companion cases had more than five arrests).”
There were gender differences in the research findings. Although males had a much higher rate of engaging in adult criminal behavior, females who were subjected to childhood maltreatment were 73 percent more likely than control group women to offend later in life for a variety of nonviolent offenses, and 8.2 percent of the abused females engaged in subsequent violent behavior contrasted with 3.6 percent of those in the control group.
Abused or neglected children are more likely to be arrested as both juveniles and as adults. Starting to engage in criminal behavior early may increase illegal human capital by raising experience in criminal activities, and decrease human capital in legitimate activities, such as schooling or being in the labor market. This would further increase criminal propensities.
Estimates suggest that the crime induced by abuse costs society about $6.7 billion per year at the low end and up to $62.5 billion at the high end. The estimates depend on the social costs attributed to crime, and specifically, whether those costs include estimates of willingness to pay to avoid crime.
Despite all this data suggesting the link between abuse and neglect and offending, most children who are abused or neglected during childhood do not later engage in delinquent or criminal behavior. There are, thus, some protective or ameliorative factors that come into play to interrupt the link in these children (National Institute of Justice).
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