Childhood trauma has strong links to juvenile crime and detention.
A University of Adelaide study interviewed 184 young people, including Indigenous young people, in the youth justice system.
If found most of those interviewed had been abused as children.
Associate Professor, Catia Malvaso says most had experienced significant individual, family and community-based adversity.
“We found that 70% of children reported experiencing physical abuse, almost one-in-five (17%) reported experiencing sexual abuse and 81% reported experiencing emotional abuse.”
“We asked them about exposure to family violence, parental separation, living with a household member who had substance use challenges or mental illness, or who’d experienced imprisonment. We found one-third to two-thirds of young people reported these challenges” she said.
Associate Professor Catia Malvaso says there was one part of the study’s finding which really shocked her.
“I wasn’t surprised that children were reporting these experiences but I was surprised at the magnitude.
We’ve done a systematic review where we looked at over 120 studies from other countries that looked at the prevalence of these experiences, and our estimates ended up being four times higher that those reported in the international literature.
It really highlighted for us the need to collect local data and to ask and listen to what children in our community tell us about their needs and experiences.”
The study highlights the need to address the impact of life events and trauma.
“In terms of thinking about reform, one of our key messages or takeaways from this work is that we really need to understand and address the impact of life events and trauma on child development and on how that influences the risk of coming in contact with the justice system,” she said.
Associate Professor Malvaso says putting more young people behind bars isn’t the answer.
“Punitive responses to these types of behaviours don’t actually work and that can actually increase these sort of risk and acting out behaviours.”
“Rather than punish the behaviours, we need to try and address the causes of those behaviours. We’re advocating for more trauma informed and trauma focused responses.
We need organisations, agencies and services that can recognise and respond to symptoms of trauma and we also need those really intensive clinical services that can help children through their experiences and resolve some of the consequences of those traumatic experiences.”
(Feature image: engin akyurt on Unsplash)
