Child Welfare System Contact in the Global North

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Racial and Class Inequality in US Incarceration in the Early Twenty-First Century

Abstract The relative importance of racial and class inequality in incarceration in the United States has recently become the subject of much debate. In this paper, we seek to give this debate a stronger empirical foundation. First, we update previous research on racial and class inequality in people’s likelihood of being imprisoned. Then, we examine racial and class inequality in people’s risk of having a family member imprisoned or living in a high-imprisonment neighborhood. We find that racial inequality in prison admissions has fallen in the twenty-first century, while class inequality has surged. However, in recent years, Black people with high levels of education and income were more likely than white people with low levels of education and income to experience the imprisonment of a family member or to live in a neighborhood with a high imprisonment rate. These seemingly contradictory conclusions can be reconciled by the fact that enduring structures of racial domination have made class boundaries among Black people more permeable than they are among white people. Imprisonment in the United States is increasingly reserved for the poor. But because Black Americans are disproportionately connected to the poor through their families and neighborhoods, racial inequality exceeds class inequality in people’s indirect experiences with imprisonment

Child Abuse Prevention Education Policies Increase Reports of Child Sexual Abuse

Background: It is well supported that engaging in prevention education increases a child’s awareness of child sexual abuse. However, due to methodological limitations, prior research has yet to determine whether this knowledge leads to increases in reporting or substantiation of child sexual abuse. Objective: We examined whether state mandates for school-based prevention education correlate to changes in reports of child sexual abuse. Methods: We used a quasi-experimental design to investigate the association between child sexual abuse report rates from 2005-2019 and presence of state legislation mandating school-based child sexual abuse prevention curricula. Child sexual abuse report data were obtained from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System child files. We focused on reports for school-aged children ages 5-17. Data on state laws on prevention curricula were extracted from enoughabuse.org, Prevent Child Abuse America, ErinsLaw.org, and directly from published legislation. Results: State education mandates were associated with an increase in the incidence of child sexual abuse reports made by education personnel (IRR = 1.22, 95% CI, 1.01-1.48). Policies were not associated with increases in incidence of child sexual abuse reports made by non-education personnel (IRR = 1.08, 95% CI, 0.95-1.22) or decreases in likelihood that any given report was confirmed (OR = 1.00; 95% CI, 0.90-1.12). Conclusions: There is moderate evidence that adopting state mandates for child sexual abuse prevention education may increase disclosures and reporting of child sexual abuse by school-based sources. There is no evidence that mandates decrease the validity of child sexual abuse reporting by school-based sources