Introduction
After increasing sharply in the early 1990s, rates of juvenile violent crime have been declining since 1993 (Snyder and Sickmund, 1999). Enhanced prevention and intervention efforts have had an impact. Yet, this encouraging trend should not invite tolerance of the status quo or inhibit efforts to drive rates still lower. This Bulletin examines a potentially powerful, yet often overlooked, delinquency prevention strategy: efforts to reduce the incidence of childhood maltreatment. The link between experiencing maltreatment as a child and committing offenses as a juvenile is profound. A substantial body of research (discussed more fully later) has shown that:
- Maltreated children are significantly
more likely than nonmaltreated children
to become involved in delinquent
and criminal behavior.
- The prevalence of childhood abuse or
neglect among delinquent and criminal
populations is substantially greater
than that in the general population.
- Delinquent youth with a history of
abuse or neglect are at higher risk of
continuing their delinquent behavior
than delinquents without such a
history.
It follows, then, that if it were possible to reduce the incidence of children’s maltreatment, delinquency rates would decline. Reducing the maltreatment of children is a goal best addressed on multiple levels—that is, through primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention efforts.1 Reducing childhood maltreatment also requires fundamental social changes in areas that contribute to increased rates of maltreatment (e.g., poverty). This Bulletin focuses on a tertiary prevention strategy that shows great promise in reducing subsequent maltreatment once a family has come to the attention of a child protection services (CPS) agency.
The Bulletin begins with a brief review of what is known about the link between childhood maltreatment and juvenile and adult offending. Next, it provides an overview of OJJDP’s Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders and identifies where CPS tertiary prevention efforts belong within a community’s continuum of delinquency prevention and intervention efforts. The main body of the Bulletin describes and assesses a particularly promising CPS tertiary prevention strategy known as Structured Decision Making (SDM).
1 In this Bulletin, “primary prevention” refers to activities that are directed at whole population groups, “secondary prevention” refers to activities directed at persons who have not yet experienced an incident of maltreatment but are deemed at increased risk of doing so, and “tertiary prevention” refers to activities directed at those who have experienced a first target event and efforts to prevent subsequent events.
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