Investigating the Link Between Child Maltreatment and Crime

描述（由申请人提供）： 2003年，90多万儿童成为虐待和忽视儿童的受害者，尽管每年的人数令人震惊，但对虐待儿童的长期影响却知之甚少。如果虐待与日后的犯罪之间存在重大联系，虐待的社会成本将被放大。这种联系的存在是大众媒体的一个主要内容，也是对这个问题进行大量学术研究的主题，但现有的许多研究都有局限性。我们的第一个具体目标是建立产生令人信服的估计虐待的影响，未来的犯罪倾向。我们的估计将在几个方面改进以前的文献。第一，侧重于多种类型的虐待和与犯罪有关的广泛后果。第二，通过使用全国青少年健康纵向调查（Add Health），这是一个具有全国代表性的数据集，其中包括一个既没有报告虐待也没有报告犯罪活动的大型“对照”儿童群体。第三，通过使用各种统计技术仔细控制混杂因素。第四，我们调查了性别和社会经济地位对虐待影响的差异。我们的第二个具体目标是发展的一些主要理论的影响，为什么虐待导致一些受害者犯罪的实证检验。主要理论包括社会学习理论、社会控制理论、社会心理压力理论和犯罪的经济理论。这些理论表明，某些风险因素，如不良榜样（父亲入狱），社会关系破裂（例如无家可归或与家庭成员关系不佳）以及累积的压力（例如疾病）都可能加剧（调解）虐待的影响。犯罪的经济理论与其他理论相辅相成，因为它们认为犯罪活动的主要驱动力是个人收入能力受损，这反过来可能反映了虐待对学习成绩的影响。这也将被调查。我们使用国家青少年健康纵向调查的数据来研究虐待儿童对成年人犯罪倾向的影响。我们的工作通过使用一个大型的，具有全国代表性的数据集，控制虐待受害者和其他儿童之间的其他差异，并通过检查虐待，社会经济地位和儿童性别之间的关系，改善了以前的估计。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): More than 900,000 children became victims of child abuse and neglect in 2003, yet despite this appalling annual toll, relatively little is known about the long-term effects of child maltreatment. The social cost of maltreatment will be magnified if there is a significant link between maltreatment and crime later in life. The existence of such a link is a staple of the popular media and has also been the subject of considerable scholarly research into this question, yet much of the existing research suffers from limitations. Our first specific aim is to build to produce convincing estimates of the effects of maltreatment of future propensity to engage in crime. Our estimates will improve on the previous literature in several ways. First, by focusing on multiple types of maltreatment and a wide range of outcomes related to crime. Second, by using the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a nationally representative data set which includes a large "control" group of children who report neither maltreatment nor criminal activity. Third by controlling carefully for confounders using a variety of statistical techniques. Fourth, we investigate differences in the effects of maltreatment by gender and socioeconomic status. Our second specific aim is to develop empirical tests of implications of some of the leading theories about why maltreatment causes some victims to commit crimes. Leading theories include Social Learning Theory, Social Control Theory, Social-Psychological Strain Theory, and economic theories of crime. These theories suggest that certain risk factors, such as having poor role models (father in jail), disrupted social bonds (e.g. through homelessness or poor relationships with family members), and cumulative stresses (e.g. through illness) may all exacerbate (mediate) the effects of maltreatment. Economic theories of crime are complementary with these other theories in that they suggest that the primary driver for criminal activity is the individual's impaired earnings capacity, which may in turn reflect the effects of maltreatment on academic performance. This too will be investigated. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health to examine the effect of child maltreatment on adults' propensity to commit crime. Our work improves on previous estimates by using a large, nationally representative data set, controlling for other differences between victims of maltreatment and other children, and by examining the relationship between maltreatment, socioeconomic status, and child gender.