Understanding crime and place is an important research activity of the Australian Institute of Criminology. Crime is often clustered and child maltreatment, itself a crime, is also a significant risk factor for future offending. In the locality studied by the authors of this paper, rates of child maltreatment varied from 53.0 per 1000 in one neighbourhood to 8.1 per 1000 in another, even though both neighbourhoods had similar levels of social disadvantage and comprised a similar mix of both private and public housing.
Children are very vulnerable to maltreatment, and understanding the social environment within which that maltreatment occurs is one step towards developing preventive measures. This paper shows that instances of maltreatment are clustered by variables such as neighbourhood cohesion, the levels of trust and distrust within neighbourhoods and the value people place on local friendships. This study found that professionals could often identify areas of risk, and outlines their proposals for relevant community-building strategies that could limit child maltreatment.
Work of this type will be followed up by the Institute’s Crime Analysis and Modelling Program.