Rates of Abuse
Are Child Maltreatment Rates Rising or Falling? Experts disagree about which direction child maltreatment rates are going. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, more than 872,000 child maltreatment cases were confirmed by child protective service agencies in 2004. [1] The victimization rate, based on reports to child protective services, increased from 13.4 per 1,000 children in 1990 to 15.3 per 1,000 children in 1993, probably due to increased awareness and reporting of child maltreatment. Between 1993 and 1999, child maltreatment rates decreased dramatically, but have since stabilized at around 12 per 1,000 children. Statistics from the most recent Family Violence Survey conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics suggest that the rate of family violence has fallen over the past decade, consistent with overall crime trends.
The seeming decline in victimization rates in the mid- to late-1990s may have been due to a combination of factors, including greater use of alternative response systems, which build on the family's strengths while assessing its particular needs and ensuring the safety of the child. Rather than initiate a full child protective services response in every case, child protective service agencies may offer alternative response systems to assist families for whom the risk of harm from child maltreatment is considered low. Increased prosecution, child protective service intervention, and the implementation of prevention programs also may have contributed to declines in child maltreatment victimizations. [2]
On the other hand, some researchers assert that national estimates of child abuse cannot be determined easily because many child maltreatment cases are never brought to the attention of State or local child protective service agencies, and many cases lack sufficient evidence to substantiate. Consequently, many national estimates may undercount the actual number of victimized children (Kelley, Thornberry, and Smith, 1997).
Notes and Works Cited
Notes
[1] A child was counted each time he or she was the subject of a report. Thus, the count of child victims is based on the number of investigations that found the child to be a victim of one or more types of maltreatment. As a report-based count, therefore, some victims may be counted more than once.
[2] An example of a prevention program is the Exit Notice. Expansion of this Denver-based nurse home visitation program was facilitated by the U.S. Department of Justice at six pilot sites. It has now expanded to more than 150 sites in 20 States.
Works Cited
Kelley, B.T., T.P. Thornberry, and C.A. Smith. In the Wake of Childhood Maltreatment. Juvenile Justice Bulletin. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, August 1997, NCJ 165257.