Child Maltreatment and the Justice System: Predictors of Court Involvement

Abstract

Objectives: Characteristics of the child victim, perpetrator, and maltreatment incident were used to examine predictors of court involvement in cases of serious child maltreatment. Method: Cases were drawn from those reported to: child protective services (n = 225), sheriff's office ( n = 225), prosecutor's office ( n = 60), and dependency court ( n = 65). Logistic regression was used to calculate predicted probabilities of criminal court involvement and dependency court involvement Results: Cases involving female victims were more likely to be filed in criminal court, and sexual abuse had the highest likelihood of prosecution. Cases involving male perpetrators, older perpetrators, and multiple victims were more likely to be filed for prosecution. Physical neglect was the most common type of maltreatment to result in dependency court filings. Perpetrator gender had opposite effects in the two systems. Conclusion: Tracking cases even in the same jurisdiction is confounded by the lack of common identifiers across the agencies involved.

Police Charging Decisions in Child Maltreatment Investigations: Findings from the 2008 Ontario Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect

“…The results of this study also lend support to earlier studies suggesting that police are more likely to lay charges if the harm or maltreatment suffered by 440 the child is severe or results in injury (Brewer et al, 1997;Cross et al, 1994Sedlak et al, 2005;Stroud et al, 2000). It has been stated that police lay charges only in cases where there is a high probability of securing a conviction to avoid making wrongful prosecutions (Holleran et al, 2010).…”

“…The extant literature has consistently found that police charging decisions are higher for sexual abuse cases (Brewer et al, 1997;Bryden & 430 Lengnick, 1997;Cross et al, 2005Cross et al, , 2015Sedlak et al, 2005;Walsh et al, 2010). This finding may be because child sexual abuse includes using children younger than age 16 years for all types of sexual activity, from sexual touching to prostitution.…”

“…Sedlak et al (2005) also found that adjusting for maltreatment type, cases pertaining to female victims were more likely to be charged than cases involving male victims. Similar findings have also been reported by other studies (Pipe et al, 2013;Stroud et al, 2000;Walsh et al, 2010).…”

“…characteristics (Cross, De Vos, & Whitcomb, 1994;Hartley, Mullings, & Marquart, 2013;Jones, Finkelhor, & Halter, 2006;Pipe et al, 2013;Sedlak et al, 2005;Tjaden & Thoennes, 1992;Walsh et al, 2010). 40 Estimates of charging incidence vary from study to study.…”

Maltreated children's understanding of and emotional reactions to dependency court involvement

“…Differences in children’s victimization experiences may affect how they are prepared for legal involvement and what is expected of them during legal proceedings. Finally, criminal prosecution is less likely when victims are younger (Sedlak et al, 2005; Whitcomb et al, 1991), which may lead to proportionally more older children being represented in criminal than dependency court.…”