Children’s contact with police as a victim, person of interest and witness in New South Wales, Australia

AuthorStacy Tzoumakis,Kimberlie Dean,Melissa J Green,Tyson Whitten,Vaughan J Carr,Kristin R Laurens,Felicity Harris
DOI10.1177/0004865819890894
Date01 September 2020
Published date01 September 2020
Subject MatterArticles
untitled
Article
Australian & New Zealand Journal of
Children’s contact with
Criminology
2020, Vol. 53(3) 387–410
!
police as a victim, person of
The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
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interest and witness in
DOI: 10.1177/0004865819890894
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New South Wales, Australia
Tyson Whitten
School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney,
Australia
Melissa J Green
School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney,
Australia; Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, Australia
Stacy Tzoumakis
School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney,
Australia; School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith
University, Southport, Australia
Kristin R Laurens
School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney,
Australia; School of Psychology and Counselling, and Institute of
Health and Biomedical Innovation, Queensland University of
Technology, Brisbane, Australia
Felicity Harris
School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney,
Australia
Vaughan J Carr
School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney,
Australia; Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, Australia;
Department of Psychiatry, Monash, University, Melbourne,
Australia
Corresponding author:
Kimberlie Dean, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia.
Email: k.dean@unsw.edu.au

388
Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 53(3)
Kimberlie Dean
School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney,
Australia; Justice Health & Forensic Mental Health Network,
Matraville, Australia
Abstract
Contact with the police, as the first contact with the criminal justice system for young people
and children, may signify individuals who are vulnerable to later adverse social and health
outcomes. However, little is known about how often children have contact with police or for
what reason. In this paper, we provide a demographic profile of the prevalence and reasons
for police contact among a representative, longitudinal, population-based sample of 91,631
young people in New South Wales, Australia. By 13 years of age, almost one in six (15.6%)
children had contact with police as a victim, person of interest and/or witness on at least one
occasion. The most common reason for contact with police was in relation to an assault.
There was considerable overlap among children who had been in contact with police on
more than one occasion for different reasons, with those having police contact as a person of
interest or witness being seven times more likely to have also been in contact with police as a
victim in a separate incident, than children not known to police. We show that contact with
the police is surprisingly common among children and suggest that early interventions for
children in contact with police might prevent a range of adverse outcomes not limited to
criminal offending.
Keywords
Children’s contact with police, persons of interest, population-based study, record linkage,
victims, witness
Date received: 16 July 2019; accepted: 4 November 2019
A disproportionate number of children and adolescents are involved in or exposed to
crime, with the average age of contact with the criminal justice system peaking before
adulthood is reached (Finkelhor, Turner, Shattuck, & Hamby, 2015; Loeber &
Farrington, 2014; Richards, 2009). Estimates from the United States suggest that
more than half of young people aged under 18 years have witnessed or been the
victim of violence and are twice as likely to be the victims of serious violent crime
compared to those over 18 years, accounting for around 20% of all arrests involving
serious violent or property crime (Sickmund & Puzzanchera, 2014). Similar patterns are
evident in Australian crime statistics, which indicate that a greater proportion of the
juvenile population, compared to the general population, have been charged by police
for a principal offence (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2017a) and/or reported being the
victim of sexual assault, kidnapping or robbery (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2017b).

Whitten et al.
389
The risk of involvement in criminal activity and violence in youth is known to be
particularly high among subgroups of the population, including those who identify as
Indigenous or other minority ethnic groups, such as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait
Islander young people in Australia (Fitzgerald & Weatherburn, 2002; Kenny &
Lennings, 2007), and those who reside in poor or rural areas (Baglivio, Wolff, Epps,
& Nelson, 2017; Steele et al., 2016). Involvement in or exposure to crime during child-
hood and early adolescence is associated with a number of adverse health outcomes
across the life-course, such as risk of physical injury (Whitten, Green, et al., 2019),
mental illness (Fowler, Tompsett, Brakiszewski, Jacques-Tiura, & Baltes, 2009;
Schiling, Aseltine, & Gore, 2007) and externalizing problems (A. D. Farrell, Mehari,
Kramer-Kuhn, & Goncy, 2014), including substance use problems (Whitten, Burton,
Tzoumakis, & Dean, 2019). Early involvement in crime is also associated with a range of
adverse social outcomes, including peer rejection (Higgins, Piquero, & Piquero, 2011),
school failure (Jakobsen, Fergusson, & Horwood, 2012) and adjustment problems in
later life (Jennings, Rocque, Fox, Piquero, & Farrington, 2016; Piquero, Farrington,
Nagin, & Moffitt, 2010). Young people involved in or exposed to crime at a younger age
are also at greater risk of repeated engagement in criminal activities or exposure to crime
(Craig, Piquero, Farrington, & Ttofi, 2017; Wiley & Esbensen, 2016; Wolff, Baglivio, &
Piquero, 2017), and many of these adverse outcomes may not be fully recognized until
the young person has become enmeshed in the criminal justice system (Loeber,
Farrington, & Petechuk, 2003).
Young people who witness criminal activities, or who are the victims of crime, are
known to be at a higher risk of engaging in subsequent criminal behaviour (C. Farrell &
Zimmerman, 2018; Fox, Perez, Cass, Baglivio, & Epps, 2015; Jennings, Piquero, &
Reingle, 2012). In fact, the link between an early age of contact with the criminal justice
system and continuity in criminal offending is well documented. For example, early
police contact, particularly before the age of 10 years, was associated with longer crim-
inal careers among male parolees from the California Youth Authority (Piquero,
Brame, & Lynam, 2004). Likewise, court data for 808 youths from the Seattle Social
Development Project found that an earlier age of offending predicted a greater number
of court referrals (Farrington et al., 2003). Evidence from the Cambridge Study in
Delinquent Development also shows higher reoffending rates (91.4%) among children
who were first convicted between the ages of 10 and 13 years (Farrington, Piquero, &
Jennings, 2013). Similar patterns of offending have also been observed in Australia:
research on a Queensland birth cohort of 14,730 people (born in 1983–1984) showed
that an earlier age of first police caution was associated with a greater likelihood of
subsequent police caution or court appearance by 17 years of age (Dennison, Stewart, &
Hurren, 2006). Furthermore, in a comparable study in New South Wales (NSW), con-
tact with the criminal justice system before 14 years of age more than doubled the
average number of court contacts by age 33 years (Weatherburn & Ramsey, 2018).
Despite this extant literature, there are few causal explanations regarding the poten-
tial influence of early life contact with the criminal justice system as a victim or witness
on the later development of offending. Instead, most explanations of the victim, offend-
er and witness overlap are adapted from classical criminological theory. For example,
according to routine activities theory, initial exposure to the justice system may be
facilitated by the victims, witnesses and perpetrators of crime sharing similar lifestyles

390
Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 53(3)
and routine activities conducive to criminal involvement and exposure (Schreck,
Stewart, & Osgood, 2008). In line with social control theory, exposure to crime may
also signify a lack of prosocial relationships with conventional others and institutions,
leading to disinhibition and a lack of self-control (Hirschi, 1969). Furthermore, from the
perspective of social learning theory, the victims and witnesses of crime may learn to
subsequently enact the criminal behaviours and values they have observed from perpe-
trators, particularly if such behaviours and values are rewarded and reinforced
(Akers, 1985).
The absence of a specific theory incorporating the effects of early exposure to crime
on the development of offending may be attributed to the paucity of large, longitudinal,
population-based studies that include concurrent measures of criminal behaviour and
exposure to crime as a victim and witness. Most previous studies are limited by reliance
on self-report data that does not measure the full gamut of criminal offences, and
generally have high attrition rates and/or relatively small samples (e.g., C. Farrell &
Zimmerman, 2018; Finkelhor et al., 2015; Jennings, Piquero, & Reingle, 2012).
Population estimates of the number of young people who are the offenders, victims
and witnesses of crime in Australia are especially scarce because certain legislation, such
as the NSW Young Offenders Act (1997), can prohibit the identification of young
people in official records. Accurate population data on young people’s involvement in
the criminal justice system over time...

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