Children in out-of-home care are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system, especially in formal court proceedings and youth custody. Whether this extends to other types of contact, such as police contact as a person of interest, victim, or witness, is unclear. This descriptive study examined a range of criminal justice contacts in adolescence (i.e., police contacts, police cautions, youth justice conferencing, court appearances, and youth custody) among young people who experienced out-of-home care in childhood. Data for >79,000 children were drawn from the New South Wales Child Development Study, with linked administrative records from child protection and criminal justice available from birth to age 17 years. We identified young people placed in out-of-home care before age 10 years ( n = 1,715) to determine the prevalence of different criminal justice contacts for these individuals from age 10 to age 17, compared to those who did not experience out-of-home care prior to age 10. Analyses were conducted separately for girls and boys, by placement type (e.g., foster care, family and kinship care), and by number of placements (0, 1, 2, and ≥3). The prevalence of all types of criminal justice contact was significantly higher among those placed in out-of-home care compared to those who were not. Specifically, 62.3% of young people in out-of-home care had any type of contact with the criminal justice system, compared to 22.3% of those with no out-of-home care before age 10. The prevalence of criminal justice contacts was comparable for boys and girls, as well as across out-of-home care placement types and number of placements. While children who experience out-of-home care in childhood are at heightened risk for all types of criminal justice contact, most children who experience out-of-home care did not have a court appearance (88.9%) or experience youth custody (91.5%).
Tzoumakis et al. (Mon,) studied this question.