Involvement with child protective services and contact with police: Findings from a population based record linkage study of 71,465 children in NSW

Tzoumakis S^1,2, Whitten T^2,3, Laurens K^2,4, Dean K^2,5, Harris F², Carr V^2,6,7, Green M^2,6

¹School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith University, ²Discipline of Psychiatry and Mental Health, University of New South Wales, ³Centre for Law and Justice, Charles Sturt University, ⁴Queensland University of Technology (QUT), School of Psychology and Counselling, ⁵Justice Health & Forensic Mental Network, ⁶Neuroscience Research Australia, ⁷Department of Psychiatry, Monash University

Biography:

Stacy Tzoumakis, PhD is an ARC Senior Research Fellow at the Griffith Criminology Institute at Griffith University in Australia. She is interested in the intersection between the child protection and criminal justice systems. Her research also focuses on the intergenerational transmission of maltreatment and antisocial behaviour. She is particularly interested in understanding gender differences in the risk and protective factors for maltreatment and offending. She has extensive experience working with large longitudinal cohorts in Australia and Canada.

The relationship between child maltreatment and subsequent offending/victimisation is well-established. However, the nature and specificity of these relationships are poorly understood, in large part due to measurement issues, lack of longitudinal data, and reliance on reports of substantiated maltreatment which can underestimate the impact of maltreatment. In this study, we examined associations between child protection contact (age 0 to <11 years) and early adolescent (≥11-14 years) police contact (as a victim and/or person of interest), with respect to different levels of child protective services involvement (i.e., no risk of significant harm [non-ROSH], unsubstantiated ROSH, substantiated ROSH, and out-of-home care; each relative to no child protection contact). Data were drawn from the New South Wales Child Development Study, a longitudinal population-based study that includes administrative records from child protection and police for 71,465 children. We examined associations between levels of child protection and police contact as a: victim only; person of interest only; and as both victim and person of interest, after accounting for covariates (child’s sex, Indigenous status, socioeconomic status, maternal age, and parental offending history). Multinomial regression analysis revealed that all four levels of child protection were associated with police contact, relative to children with no child protection contact. Substantiated ROSH and out-of-home care had the largest odds ratios, which were similar in magnitude across police contact categories. Overall, there were higher odds ratios for contact with police as both a victim and person of interest, compared to contact with police as a victim or person of interest only.