From maltreatment to delinquency: Service trajectories after a first intervention of child protection services

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Reference

Laurier C, Hélie S, *Pineau-Villeneuve C, Royer MN. (2016). From maltreatment to delinquency: Service trajectories after a first intervention of child protection services. Journal of Public Child Welfare. 10(4): 391-413.

Abstract

The relationship between maltreatment in childhood and delinquency in adolescence is recognized. However, the data available do not reveal what proportion of children under the supervision of child protection services (CPS) later transfer to youth legal services, nor the sequence of services provided by these two systems. This study sketches a preliminary portrait of Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) incidence among Quebec children and adolescents as a consequence of a first crime after initial CPS case closure (N = 14,252). It quantifies the scope of the phenomenon and identifies the best predictors of YCJA incidence from among the administrative data available. Survival analysis revealed a 15.4% YCJA incidence for the entire cohort in the five and a half years following termination of initial intervention; boys between 12 and 17 years old when their initial CPS cases were closed were at the greatest risk (27.2%).

DOI