People often addume that things are worse these days than in the past, so it’s great to be able to point out that things are so much better these days!
The latest news is that child abuse is down 26% since 1993. That’s an amazing 200,000 fewer children who are being abused! And the great thing is that the biggest drop is in child sexual abuse, down more than 60,000 kids.
Well emotional abuse, which the study points to is hard to define. Physical abuse is more or less cut and dry. (Although that can be tricky as well)
It could simply be as the article points out overt abuse is less tolerated so the kids are abused out of the limelight where could be abused. I live in Chicago in a minority neighborhood and whether it’s Black, Latino, Polish or whatever, there are still a huge number of kids I see, what was called in my day, “raised by the cuff of their parents hand.”
It would be interesting to see the data. Is it the end results they are counting? In other words, are they only counting the number of cases where the physical outcome is reported?
I wonder if the economy plays into effect. The 90s were great economic boom times and outside of the 9-11 slump the economy was pretty good till the last few years. When finances are good, there’s less stress and the parents can cope and won’t take it out on their kids.
I often wonder if the physical violence is being replaced in subtle ways. It would be nice to think our society has come to the conclusion that children can be effectively controlled without violence, except for that kid who sat next to me at Denny’s. HE DESERVED IT.
I found it odd that they released this information without the press conference that would be expected for such big news. I guess it’s because its from an organization that is used to solicit grants and other money by trumpeting what a big problem it is. A smaller problem might mean less money.
It says at the end the study does NOT cover the recent recession. Not all that long ago I was reading headlines child abuse was way up because of stress and tension due to firings and layoffs. So which is it? Either child abuse is now up (after the study) because of the economy or child abuse is now down ( reasons cited and maybe both parents leave kid alone a lot of the time because they’re both out working whatever jobs they can get, come home exhausted, go to bed, repeat. No time or energy to abuse. does this sound dumb?)
The best part I think is that this is NOT a fluke. It wasn’t a single huge drop, but rather a slow steady drop over the course of 12 years. This is more indicative of a cultural change that will hopefully stick.
The study tracks cases of child abuse known to agencies that are often aware of it, like child welfare agencies, local social service, schools, hospitals, day care centers, health professionals and law enforcement professionals. These agencies would normally report cases to child protective services (CPS) and an investigation by a caseworker would follow.
Usually, studies on child abuse only look at reports to CPS. Unfortunately, CPS does not follow up on all cases of reported child abuse and not all cases get reported. This study (the fourth National Incidence Study, usually referred to as NIS-4) has members of agencies that usually report child abuse case to CPS, document cases of child abuse known to them. So the number of cases known to agencies that often come in contact with child abuse should be more accurate than the number of cases known to CPS. The only way you could get more information on child abuse is if you get trustworthy reports from victims of child abuse.
The last time this study was done was in 1993, the NIS-3, which is why these numbers are being compared to 1993. This is about as good as it gets when it comes to measuring child abuse so a decline in these numbers is a good sign.
If anyone wants the raw data (and who doesn’t just love data in the raw) you can find it here.
There’s nothing surprising about this. All crime in the U.S. has gone down since about that point. In fact, somewhere around 1991 or so was the peak for crime in the U.S. if you looked over the past fifty or sixty years (and it’s hard to get reliable statistics for a longer period). For some crimes the decrease has been more than 26%. If you look at any chart of crime in the U.S. there has been a slow but fairly steady increase from the mid-1950’s or so up to about 1991 and a slightly faster but still steady decrease since that time.
It makes me rather angry that this has gotten so little attention. You just know that if the news were that child abuse had gone up 25%, it would be all over the news.
This is true of all drops in crime. Many news sources make their profits by exaggerating the amount of crime. If people were insufficiently paranoid about crime, they wouldn’t read that paper or watch that station. It’s clearly true for some of the cable stations which have live coverage of things like car chases or frequent coverage of the disappearance of people for months at time. They never mention how rare such an event is or that it’s getting even rarer, because then the viewers would then be less paranoid and would watch less.
Personal guess would be that the main difference is the institution of three strikes laws. The sort of people who would have been most likely to be going out, getting drunk, raising hell, and coming back to beat their kids are now all in jail for very long periods of time. I’m hoping that this will mean there won’t be a next generation to take their place, instead of repeating the cycle.
Though there’s the alternate theory that when abortion was legalized, it meant that fewer single parents were having kids and hence fewer kids were raised in poor, broken homes.
Totally coincidentally, I am doing a rather small research project on the link between criminal behavior and lead exposure for an environmental justice class I’m taking right now. Turns out that there is actually fairly convincing (at least to me, tbh I am not qualified to really evaluate all of the studies I read, but there are a LOT of them) evidence that the fall in crime is at least partially related to the decrease in lead everywhere. Lead exposure to young children causes cognitive problems, lowers IQ, and can cause brain damage that results in behavioral problems. All of these factors are linked to criminal behavior.
Lead began to decrease significantly in the 1970s; leaded gas began being phased out in 1973 and lead-based paint was banned in 1978. And when does the drop in crime begin? 1992, precisely when the first generation of kids to benefit from these laws hit their teens, which are generally considered to be the most criminal years of people’s lives. It’s interesting, I have one chart comparing adult arrest rates vs. juvenile arrest rates, and juvenile rates are far higher than adult rates from 1960 on - but in 1989, juvenile arrest rates start dropping and adult rates (these are people born before the anti-lead laws came into effect) stay roughly the same. In 2000, for the first time, the juvenile arrest rate actually dips down below the adult rate. It’s stayed there ever since.
I’m not totally convinced that this is the answer to the mystery of the declining crime rate, but it’s a fascinating idea.
> Either child abuse is now up (after the study) because of the economy or child
> abuse is now down
For some reason, large-scale crime statistics are usually only available up to about two years ago. The economy only started to fall apart about two years ago. As I said in a previous post, crime in the U.S. increased from the mid-1950’s to about 1991 and dropped from 1991 to about 2007 or 2008. It’s hard to tell whether crime is up or down over the past two years. So it’s hard to tell if the economic downturn of the past two years has affected the decrease in crime from 1991 to 2007.
I have no idea why crime has gone down since 1991. I am only talking about the numbers themselves, not the reason for the numbers. I want to make this clear since a lot of people think that when I say something like “The amount of X is different now from it used to be” that I’m obviously saying something like “It’s great that the amount of X is different” or “It’s terrible that the amount of X is different” or “I know why the amount of X is different.” I’m not saying that at all. I take no position on such statements.
Where did you get this idea? The FBI has data up until 2008 and a preliminary report for 2009. It seems like violent crime increased slightly from 2004 to 2006 and it went down during the recession.
New York City has data up until 2009 (PDF). Our crime rates have been going down consistently since 1992. Only 471 people were killed last year. That’s down from 2,262 people murdered in 1990 and you don’t want to know how many people were getting killed in the 80’s.
Having worked with protect.org on their legislative committee, I’m a little dubious about this one. Although, in fairness, many states have adopted tougher sentencing guidelines in the last several years, so it’s entirely likely that many repeat abusers are still incarcerated, making the drop pretty logical.
One thing that must be said, however, is that apologist puke Richard Wexler can kiss my ass. “The best use of scarce child welfare dollars is on prevention and family preservation — not on hiring more people to investigate less actual abuse,” Wexler said.
“Family preservation,” is another way of saying, “Sending victims back to live with their abusers.”
The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform is basically an abusers’ rights foundation that seeks to keep abused children from getting away from their attackers.
They state in one of their position papers: (http://nccpr.info/solutions-services/) regarding the Alabama method of child service “The rate at which children are taken from their homes is among the lowest in the country, and re-abuse of children left in their own homes has been cut sharply.”
What they don’t say is that they’re talking about reports of continuing abuse by the children themselves go down under systems like this because they’ve already been let down by the system, why put themselves through all the hassle and blame of “breaking up the family” again when they’ve been shown loudly and clearly they aren’t going to get any help.
Thanks, Lakai. The reports that I see that are nation-wide always seemed to me to be about two years behind. I see city-wide statistics that are up-to-date, but I’ve missed the national up-to-date statistics for some reason. I guess I’m just looking at the wrong places.
Incidentally, I should make the point that the drop in crime in the U.S. was fairly steady during the 1990’s. Mostly crime has also been down in the 2000’s, but the rate of drop has been slower and a bit up and down. In any case, the rate of crime at the moment has apparently dropped back to what it was in the mid-1960’s and is much lower overall than its peak in the early 1990’s.
None of the stuff in the article is being reported on a per capita basis. How does this compare with the “echo boom” (what are often called Gen Y or Millennials) moving out of their childhood years? If there are fewer children, there may well be fewer incidents of child abuse.
I also wouldn’t dismiss the the medication angle. I was listening to a piece on NPR recently about the tremendously high percentage of kids on Medicaid (so in low-income families) that are on psychiatric medication. Whether this medication represents good medical care or is in itself a form of abuse is another debate. This is not to imply that there aren’t a lot of middle class kids who take medication and/or are victims of abuse.
