Does Child Abuse at a Young Age have an Impact on Delinquency and Criminal Offenses?

Does Child Abuse at a Young Age have an Impact on Delinquency and Criminal Offenses?

1. Introduction

Background

Child maltreatment, which entails both child neglect or child abuse, is a key social problem. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2017), over 674,000 children were victims of maltreatment in 2017. Researchers have paid a lot of attention to the significant association between child maltreatment and delinquency (Lantos et al., 2019; Lansford et al., 2007). The assumption has been that child abuse leads to later cases of misconduct. However, this is a controversial issue as the relationship between the two is not yet clear. Recent research shows that the association between child maltreatment and delinquency is more complex and intriguing than was initially perceived (Lantos et al., 2019). This study proposal will outline and explain the complicated connection between child maltreatment and misconduct, as well as review the latest literature on the association between childhood experience with abuse and the later onset of delinquency.

Research Question

• Does child abuse at a young age have an impact on delinquency and criminal offenses?

If the answers to this research question will link child abuse to delinquency and criminal offenses, then, it would have exposed our ineffective laws that have been enacted to protect children against abuse. It would also expose the rot in the community or bad behaviors that exist in our society.

2. Literature Review

This section will highlight the findings of different scholars who have done studies on this topic or closely related topics. Lantos et al. (2019) identified the patterns of both criminal and delinquent behavior. They described how the trends change over time and the offending types and socio-demographics involved. Lantos et al. (2019) also highlighted how the association between child maltreatment and delinquency varies by both sex and offending type. They further argue that there is a need for further research on the subject to better understand critical moments and possible avenues to help young individuals rise from the hurdles associated with child abuse.

Widom (2017) carried out longitudinal research where they observed a group of kids from the age of 5 to 21. He established that children who had endured child abuse in their first five years were highly likely to get detained for both non-violent and violent types of offenses. He also found out that abused children are likely to drop out of school, get fired from their jobs within the first year, and become teen parents. Malvaso, Delfabbro, and Day (2016) highlighted the issue of ethnicity and demographics. They assert that the effects of child abuse on later-life delinquency are more pronounced on the African-American youth and more noticeable on ladies than men.

Drury, Elbert, and DeLisi (2019) examined the association between childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and subsequent sex-related offending. They found relevant proof that indicates CSA is related to later sex-related offenses (Drury, Elbert, & DeLisi, 2019). However, their research is only limited to the scope of CSA and sex-related offenses and does not highlight the relationship between other forms of abuse like violence and delinquency.

Proposed Research Design

Research Design

This study will qualitative longitudinal research. It will be a longitudinal type of study because the participants have to be observed for an extended period. The young people identified to have suffered abuse in prison abuse must be observed for a long time to determine if they will engage in any acts of delinquency or crime. This longitudinal study will employ continuous methods to follow groups of people abused during childhood over a prolonged period. It will be observational in nature where qualitative data will be collected on the exposure to childhood abuse and the outcome of delinquency and crime without any external influence (Caruana et al., 2015). The researcher will conduct a longitudinal study because it can identify and relate events to specific experiences and define such experiences according to timing, presence, and chronicity (Caruana et al., 2015). It also enables the researchers to track change as time progresses within specific people in the cohort (Caruana et al., 2015).

Hypothesis

The hypothesis of this study is;  Abuse at a young age increases delinquency and criminal behavior.

Sample and Sampling

The study will involve 15-20 young inmates. The study will employ a purposive sampling technique to select only those young people who were subjected to childhood abuse. This will ensure that the researcher gets a sample that is informed about the topic under investigation. This sampling technique is advantageous because it is time-effective and cost-effective (Sharma, 2017). Furthermore, a purposive sampling method is appropriate for this study since only a limited number of young inmates can contribute to this research.

Research Strategy and Data Collection

The researcher will survey as the research strategy. The researcher will use structured interviews to collect data from the targeted group of young individuals in adult prisons. This data collection method will help the researcher to collect in-depth opinions and information that will help answer the research question and objectives. A structured interview will give the researcher the ability to pay attention to the accuracy of various responses from which organized data can be collected (Jamshed, 2014). Some of the interview questions will include:

1. What is your gender?
2. Which offense did you commit?
3. Were you subjected to any abuse in your childhood?
4. How was your relationship with your parents?
5. Do you think if your childhood life was different, you would have been a better person?

Data Analysis

The researcher will use a content analysis method to analyze the qualitative data obtained from the interviews. Content analysis is the process of categorizing behavioral or verbal data to categorize, draw summaries, and tabulate the data (Krippendorff, 2018). First, the researcher will develop and apply codes. Then, the research will identify patterns, themes,  and relationships in the data. Finally, the investigator will draw summaries from the data.

Conclusion

The study will be a qualitative longitudinal study that will follow the life of a group of incarcerated young individuals from their childhood to determine if they experienced any abuse and examine if that has led them to engage in acts of delinquency or crime. From the literature review, several studies have revealed that childhood abuse leads to later delinquency and crime, though the relationship between the two is multifaceted. This study aims at coming up with an explicit answer to the question. If it is established that indeed childhood abuse leads to later delinquency and crime, then this research will be beneficial to the field of law and society in the sense that it will provide a possible solution to the problem of delinquency and crime. There will be a need to come up with ways of preventing childhood abuse through means like ensuring prisons are safe for children, and they are locked up separately from the adults. This will ensure societal ills meted out on children like sexual abuse, physical abuse and bullying do not lead the victims to repeat the same acts later on in their lives.

References

Caruana, E. J., Roman, M., Hernández-Sánchez, J., & Solli, P. (2015). Longitudinal studies. Journal of Thoracic Disease, 7(11), E537.

Chambers, M., & Dinsmore, T. W. (2014). Advanced analytics methodologies: Driving business value with analytics. Pearson Education.

Drury, A. J., Elbert, M. J., & DeLisi, M. (2019). Childhood sexual abuse is significantly associated with subsequent sexual offending: New evidence among federal correctional clients: child Abuse & Neglect, 95, 104035.

Jamshed, S. (2014). Qualitative research method-interviewing and observation. Journal of Basic and Clinical Pharmacy, 5(4), 87.

Krippendorff, K. (2018). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology. Sage publications.

Lansford, J. E., Miller-Johnson, S., Berlin, L. J., Dodge, K. A., Bates, J. E., & Pettit, G. S. (2007). Early physical abuse and later violent delinquency: A prospective longitudinal study. Child Maltreatment, 12(3), 233-245.

Lantos, H., Wilkinson, A., Winslow, H., & McDaniel, T. (2019). Describing associations between child maltreatment frequency and the frequency and timing of subsequent delinquent or criminal behaviors across development: variation by sex, sexual orientation, and race. BMC Public Health, 19(1), 1-12.

Malvaso, C. G., Delfabbro, P. H., & Day, A. (2016). Risk factors that influence the maltreatment-offending association: A systematic review of prospective and longitudinal studies.Aggression and violent behavior, 31, 1-15.

Sharma, G. (2017). Pros and cons of different sampling techniques. International Journal of Applied Research, 3(7), 749-752.

Widom, C. S. (2017). The long-term impact of childhood abuse and neglect on crime and violence. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 24(2), 186-202.