Child Victimization

Children are the most criminally victimized segment of the population, and a substantial number face multiple, serious "poly-victimizations" during a single year. And despite the fact that the priority emphasis in academic research and government policy has traditionally gone to studying juvenile delinquents, children actually appear before authorities more frequently as victims than as offenders. But at the same time, the media and many advocates have failed to note the good news: rates of sexual abuse, child homicide, and many other forms of victimization declined dramatically after the mid-1990s, and some terribly feared forms of child victimization, like stereotypical stranger abduction, are remarkably uncommon. The considerable ignorance about the realities of child victimization can be chalked up to a field that is fragmented, understudied, and subjected to political demagoguery. In this persuasive book, David Finkelhor presents a comprehensive new vision to encompass the prevention, treatment, and study of juvenile victims, unifying conventional subdivisions like child molestation, child abuse, bullying, and exposure to community violence. Developmental victimology, his term for this integrated perspective, looks at child victimization across childhood's span and yields fascinating insights about how to categorize juvenile victimizations, how to think about risk and impact, and how victimization patterns change over the course of development. The book also provides a valuable new model of society's response to child victimization - what Finkelhor calls the Juvenile Victim Justice System - and a fresh way of thinking about barriers that victims and their families encounter when seeking help. These models will be very useful to anyone seeking to improve the way we try to help child victims. Crimes against children still happen far too often, but by proposing a new framework for thinking about the issue, Childhood Victimization opens a promising door to reducing its frequency and improving the response. Professionals, policymakers, and child advocates will find this paradigm-shifting book to be a valuable addition to their shelves.

David Finkelhor presents a comprehensive vision to encompass the prevention, treatment and study of juvenile victims, unifying conventional subdivisions like child molestation, child abuse, bullying and exposure to community violence.

Explore current social developments, issues, and controversies concerning young victims! The Victimization of Children: Emerging Issues keeps students and practitioners working with young victims on the cutting edge of the latest research developments regarding crimes against children. Leading experts from the legal, medical, and sociological communities explore some of the most urgent issues involving child victims. Researchers and practitioners in victim services, social work, mental health, public health, and criminal justice will all benefit from this useful resource. While numerous books have been written on the topic of child abuse and neglect, few delve into the more contemporary issues and problems. The Victimization of Children fills a large void in the literature by offering advanced discussions of today’s most relevant topics, making this book an in-depth supplement to generic textbooks. Forward-thinking and thought-provoking, this timely resource provides sound research to expand your knowledge base. This book provides insights into such contemporary issues as: the victimization of youths on the Internet children as victims of war and terrorism spatial patterns of child maltreatment—the concentration of child maltreatment within certain geographical areas religion-related child abuse the role of health care professionals in response to child victimization children with disabilities—abuse, neglect, and the child welfare system fetal homicide—emerging statutory and judicial regulation of third-party assaults legal and social issues surrounding closed-circuit television testimony of child victims and witnesses juvenile courts and their role in addressing family violence The Victimization of Children provides tables, figures, and the latest statistics of various aspects of child victimization to complement the experts’ contributions. This book offers new and different responses and interventions to meet the increasingly diverse contexts and situations within which child maltreatment occurs. Emerging trends are explored within this book from a cross-section of disciplines, including law, sociology, criminal justice, psychology, and health services.

​ This book describes the concept of child victimization in all its facets. Millions of young people throughout the world face violence, sexual, physical, and emotional abuse and exploitation on a daily basis. The worldwide victimization of young people can be prevented, or, at least, its incidence can be greatly reduced, if purposeful action is taken to do so. This volume researches and documents some of the ways in which young people throughout the world are victimized, and suggests strategies for preventing various forms of child vistimization. Eight distinct forms of victimization are identified and analyzed in detail. Included are discussions on child prostitution and pornography, economic exploitation through child labor and trafficking, physical and other abuse inflicted on young people in schools and other institutions, the use of children as armed combatants, and the denial of the basic needs and rights of children to such things as home and to education. In each chapter the authors discuss the nature of the victimization, its global dimensions and prevalence, and the measures governments and/or others are taking, or failing to take, to combat the harm based on the concept that youth victimization is a form of government crime.

The means by which women and children are most often subjected to victimization are discussed here, along with the causes and the legal avenues available. Part One examines family issues, including child abuse, domestic violence, and missing or abducted children, and Part Two examines their sexual exploitation. Part Three explores violent crimes against children (e.g., murder, rape and assault), while Part Four is a study of violence against women. Prostitution, pornography, sexual harassment and stalking are the subjects of Part Five. Finally, legislative responses are studied in Part Six.

"'Preventing the Sexual Victimization of Children is the first book to critically evaluate national and international efforts to reduce child sexual abuse (CSA) and ameliorate its effects. Until now, input from social science and mental health experts has been accepted for the most part uncritically, as have the programs and laws that have been developed in reliance upon that advice. Here Dr. Ewing utilizes empirical data, policy considerations, cos-benefit analyses, psychological theory, legal reasoning, and common sense to understake the often difficult and sometimes controversial task of distinguishing prevention strategies that are likely to prevent CSA from those that are not."--

This ebook is a selective guide designed to help scholars and students of criminology find reliable sources of information by directing them to the best available scholarly materials in whatever form or format they appear from books, chapters, and journal articles to online archives, electronic data sets, and blogs. Written by a leading international authority on the subject, the ebook provides bibliographic information supported by direct recommendations about which sources to consult and editorial commentary to make it clear how the cited sources are interrelated related. A reader will discover, for instance, the most reliable introductions and overviews to the topic, and the most important publications on various areas of scholarly interest within this topic. In criminology, as in other disciplines, researchers at all levels are drowning in potentially useful scholarly information, and this guide has been created as a tool for cutting through that material to find the exact source you need. This ebook is a static version of an article from Oxford Bibliographies Online: Criminology, a dynamic, continuously updated, online resource designed to provide authoritative guidance through scholarship and other materials relevant to the study and practice of criminology. Oxford Bibliographies Online covers most subject disciplines within the social science and humanities, for more information visit www.aboutobo.com.