Does Child Abuse And Family-Community Instability Cause Violent Crime?

Introduction

A synopsis of family and community violence research that is strongly connected to those involved in violent crime.

Childhood trauma can “rewire” the brain, warns new research.

Author

Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr.

Retired federal senior spokesperson. Thirty-five years of directing award-winning public relations (and explaining crime data) for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed multiple times by every national news outlet.

Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. Former Director of Information Services, National Crime Prevention Council. Former Adjunct Associate Professor of Criminology and Public affairs-University of Maryland, University College.

Former advisor to presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Former advisor to the “McGruff-Take a Bite Out of Crime” national media campaign. Certificate of Advanced Study-Johns Hopkins University. Former police officer. Aspiring drummer.

Author of ”Success With The Media: Everything You Need To Survive Reporters and Your Organization” available at Amazon and additional booksellers.

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Quotes

All quotes are edited for brevity. 

Article

There are endless references in criminological literature to the root causes of crime, principally driven by poverty or discrimination, poor schools, or the lack of economic opportunity. The “school-to-prison pipeline” has endless references.

Others believe that the principal root cause of violent crime is family and community dysfunction. While the variables above have a long history within criminology, family and community influences play a significant role. The belief is that child abuse and neglect powers crime and community influences exacerbate criminality which embodies the quote “It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men” by Frederick Douglass.

Those working with the offender population consistently refer to the difficulty of assisting or supervising many of the people on their caseloads. They often refer to difficult offenders as having “a chip on their shoulder the size of Montana.”

I did a series of podcasts with former women offenders who are now doing well (most had histories of committing violence) who all stated that they were sexually and emotionally abused as children. All insisted that the lack of loving parents and being sexually assaulted led to a life of substance abuse and personal crisis.

What follows are brief overviews of the literature:

The Connection Between The Family And Crime

“The connection between the family and crime is not a new idea. Harvard sociologist Robert Sampson — whose work on the link between institutions like the family and crime spans decades — observed that “Family structure is one of the strongest, if not the strongest, predictors of … violence across cities in the United States.”

“In a new study from the Institute for Family Studies, we, along with our co-authors Joseph Price and Seth Cannon, add to the body of evidence backing Sampson’s observation. We find that cities with above-median levels of single parenthood have violent crime and homicide rates that are 118% and 255% higher, respectively, than cities with below-median levels of single parenthood,” Dallas News, Russell Sage Foundation

Lifetime of Violence In A Sample of Released Prisoners-The Boston Reentry Study

The Boston Reentry Study was an immersive, groundbreaking series of repeated interviews with inmates released from prison to the city of Boston.

“Three main conclusions can be drawn from this review of the encounters with violence described in the interviews with a sample of released prisoners and their families.”

“First is the great salience and high level of violence disclosed through the interviews. While respondents spoke about their own violent offending, they were frequently witnesses and victims of violence too. Years of chronic violence in childhood and adolescence was largely beyond the agency of the respondents in which they were victimized or witnesses to domestic abuse and street crime unfolding around them. Serious violence flowed through intimate networks as friends and family—for 24 out of 40—died violently through an accident, suicide, or murder.”

“Second, respondents played many different roles in the violence that surrounded them over a lifetime. Their offending was clearly revealed in interviews and criminal records. They had committed robberies, assaults, and one self-reported murder. In addition, all forty respondents described their own victimization by violence, often in childhood, and often at the hands of adult guardians in the form of domestic violence or sexual abuse. As victims, the respondents were shot, stabbed, beaten, raped, and molested. But even beyond the familiar roles of victim and offender, nearly all respondents reported witnessing serious violence and all reported fighting in which the roles of victim and offender were difficult to distinguish.”

“Third, the main sites of violence—in the home, the school, the neighborhood, and the prison—reveal the influence of poverty. Home life was unstable, with adult males unrelated to the respondent often living in the house. We heard many reports of drug or alcohol dependence among the adults in the childhood home. Even in the most stable settings, mothers worked long hours leaving children unsupervised after school and in the evenings.”

82 Percent Suffered Serious Physical Or Sexual Abuse As Children

“The Correctional Association of New York describes the impact of IPV (interpersonal violence) to women in corrections noting that the vast majority of women in our correctional systems either have, are currently or will experience interpersonal violence in their lives.”

“Estimates are that three-quarters have histories of severe physical abuse by an intimate partner during adulthood, and 82% suffered serious physical or sexual abuse as children.  This is a critical issue impacting women in our systems and those that are preparing for reentry into the community.”

Young Offenders Witnessed And Experienced High Levels Of Violence

“The survey confirms that most of our society’s children are exposed to violence in their daily lives. More than 60 percent of the children surveyed were exposed to violence within the past year, either directly or indirectly (i.e., as a witness to a violent act; by learning of a violent act against a family member, neighbor, or close friend; or from a threat against their home or school).”

“Young offenders witnessed and experienced high levels of violence likely to cause trauma. For example, almost one-half (49%) witnessed someone being shot, and 30% witnessed someone being killed. The symptoms most strongly associated with exposure to violence were hostility and paranoid ideation.”

“Of the 1,354 study participants, 83% witnessed community violence at more than one time point, and 43% were direct victims of violence in the community at more than one time point.”

“The researchers found that adolescents who witnessed violence or were victimized by violence were more likely to be charged with a crime against a person at a later time.”

“Violent offending was nearly three times as high for those who experienced childhood maltreatment (emphasis added) compared to those with no history of childhood maltreatment, and these differences continued from adolescence into adulthood.”

The Percentage Of Females Murdered By An Intimate Partner Was 5 Times Higher Than For Males

54 Percent Have A Serious Brain Injury

“Through a project that began five years ago, researchers have screened 4,100 people in jail, on probation or assigned to drug courts in Denver and five other counties to find out how many have traumatic brain injury — an impairment that could impact the likelihood of their return to the criminal justice system.”

“The results were stark: 54 percent had a history of serious brain injury, compared with 8 percent of the general population,” Denver Post.

Most Offenders Have Mental Health Issues

We’ve known since a 2006 self-report study that more than half of all prison and jail inmates have mental health problems. These estimates represented 56% of state prisoners, 45% of federal prisoners, and 64% of jail inmates.

“Twenty percent of all US adults have some form of mental illness, but very few of them have a mental illness that will increase their likelihood of violence,” Slate.Com.

A 2017 report states that more than a third (37%) of prisoners had been told by a mental health professional in the past that they had a mental health disorder.

Forty-four percent of jail inmates had been told by a mental health professional in the past that they had a mental health disorder.

Some suggest that the numbers above are an undercount. Many are reluctant to admit to mental health concerns, Crime in America.

DOJ Report on Substance Abuse

More than half (58%) of state prisoners and two-thirds (63%) of sentenced jail inmates met the criteria for drug dependence or abuse, according to data collected through the National Inmate Surveys (NIS).

In comparison, approximately 5% of the total general population age 18 or older met the criteria for drug dependence or abuse, Bureau of Justice Statistics.

There is always a dispute between a formal diagnosis with drug use and mental health and the actual numbers of offenders impacted. It’s routine for correctional agencies to report that 80 to 90 percent of offenders have a substance abuse background.

PTSD

There are articles about people who live in high-crime communities having PTSD because of their exposure to violence in their families and communities.  High crime area violence seems to be corrupting; it may influence people who can see violence as a necessary component of life, Crime in America.

Conclusion-Opinion

First, there are endless communities facing income inequity and substance abuse that have low rates of stranger-to-stranger violent crime. Poverty and substance abuse do not directly cause overall violence.

Second, there are parents from distressed communities, overwhelmingly mothers, who do a wonderful job of loving and nurturing their children and keeping them away from crime. Another consideration is that I interviewed hundreds of offenders from distressed backgrounds who are now law-abiding people doing well.

Third, every time I write an article describing offenders’ backgrounds, some readers state that I’m making excuses for bad behavior. I’m not. People need to take responsibility for their actions and what they do to others.

But the reality is that child abuse, family violence, and community dysfunction power violent crime. If programs focusing on adults seem to have a terrible track record of changing individual behavior, it seems that society and individual communities must take responsibility for change.