OD NASILJA NAD DECOM DO KRIMINALITETA MALOLETNIKA: PUTEVI RAZVOJA, EMPIRIJSKI UVIDI I IMPLIKACIJE ZA PREVENCIJU I RANU INTERVENCIJU
PATHWAYS FROM CHILD ABUSE TO JUVENILE OFFENDING: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE AND IMPLICATIONS FOR PREVENTION AND EARLY INTERVENTION

Summary/Abstract: Violence against children, including psychological, physical, and sexual abuse, neglect, and exploitation, constitutes a serious violation of children’s rights and a major public health concern. It has far-reaching consequences for a child’s psychological, physical, and social development. Child maltreatment is a significant risk factor for juvenile delinquency, as well as for offending later in adulthood. Empirical evidence consistently shows that children exposed to violence are at substantially greater risk of engaging in criminal behavior than those without such experiences. This risk increases when violence that begins in childhood continues into adolescence or when violence first occurs during adolescence. Nevertheless, the majority of children who experience violent victimization in childhood do not go on to engage in criminal behavior. The paper analyses the association of (direct and indirect) violent victimization of children in the family context and their involvement in crime during adolescence. This association, however, is not straightforward; it is rather mediated by a range of individual, (micro-)social, and situational factors. Understanding the differential impact of child maltreatment on subsequent criminal behavior is therefore crucial for developing early intervention strategies and for shifting policy and practice in responding to juvenile offending toward approaches grounded in the principles of positive youth development, restorative justice, positive criminology and positive victimology. Grounded in several general theories on juvenile crime, the paper examines various pathways from childhood maltreatment to juvenile offending, illustrating them with the empirical evidence, and points to the implications of understanding these pathways for designing programs of prevention of and intervention on juvenile crime.

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