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“Cycle of Violence”
Family Violance
Suffer The Little Children
child abuse
Family Violance
Do childhood abuse and neglect lead to adult criminal behavior? How likely is it that today’s abused and neglected children will become tomorrow’s violent offenders? Did the picture change when these individuals’ records were updated after 6 years?
In one of the most detailed studies of the issue to date, research sponsored by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) found that childhood abuse and neglect increased the odds of future delinquency and adult criminality overall by 29 percent. When data were initially checked in 1988, the average age of subjects was 26 years. About 65 percent of the sample had passed through the peak years of committing violent offenses (ages 20 to 25 years). This update reports new arrest data collected in 1994, when subjects averaged 32.5 years of age and only 1 percent of the sample had not passed through the peak offending years. The examination of updated data on the same subjects 6 years later reveals findings that are similar in some respects, but quite different in others.
The study followed 1,575 cases from childhood through young adulthood, comparing the arrest records of two groups:
● A study group of 908 substantiated cases of childhood abuse or neglect processed by the courts from 1967 through 1971 and tracked through official criminal records over approximately 25 years.
● A comparison group of 667 children, not officially recorded as abused or neglected, matched to the study group according to sex, age, race, and approximate family socioeconomic status.
Although many individuals in both groups had no juvenile or adult criminal record, being abused or neglected as a child increased the likelihood of arrest as a juvenile by 59 percent, as an adult by 28 percent, and for a violent crime by 30 percent.
The “cycle of violence” hypothesis suggests that a childhood history of physical abuse predisposes the survivor to violence in later years.
This study reveals that victims of neglect are also likely to develop later violent criminal behavior. If violence is begotten by not only violence, but also by neglect, far more attention needs to be devoted to the families of children who are abandoned and severely malnourished. This study relied on arrest records to measure delinquency and criminality, initially checked in 1988.1 Updated arrest records were collected in 1994, and results from this update are presented in this Research in Brief
Several important design features distinguish this research from prior efforts to study the intergenerational transmission of violence.2 First, by following a large number (1,575) of cases from childhood through adolescence and into young adulthood, this prospective study was able to examine the long-term consequences of abuse and neglect. The sample, drawn from a metropolitan area in the Midwest, was restricted to children who were 11 years of age or younger at the time of the abuse or neglect.
Arrest records were originally examined in 1988. When juvenile and adult criminal records were reexamined in 1994, the age of the subjects ranged from 18 to 40 years old. Fewer than 1 percent were younger than 25 years of age, and the mean age of the group was 32.5 years.
Matching members of the study group to others whose official records showed no childhood abuse or neglect was an equally important feature of the research. This design allowed the study to separate known correlates of delinquency and criminality (age, sex, race, and socioeconomic status) from the experience of child abuse and neglect. Both groups were approximately two-thirds white and onethird black and were about evenly divided between males and females. Most were between the ages of 6 and 11 years old at the time the abuse was documented or matches were made (see exhibit 1).
The study design also featured clear operational definitions of abuse and neglect. Combined with large sample sizes, this permitted the separate examination of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect, defined as follows:
● Physical abuse cases included injuries such as bruises, welts, burns, abrasions, lacerations, wounds, cuts, bone and skull fractures, and other evidence of physical injury.
● Sexual abuse charges varied from relatively nonspecific charges of “assault and battery with intent to nearly twice as many offenses (mean = 2.4 versus 1.4), and were arrested more frequently (17 percent of abused and neglected cases versus 9 percent of comparison cases had more than five arrests). This information is important because of the finding in the general delinquency literature that shows early onset is associated with increased variety, seriousness, and duration of problems.
