Child abuse, neglect, and violent criminal behavior in a Midwest metropolitan area of the United States, 1967-1988

These data examine the relationships between childhood abuse and/or neglect and later criminal and violent criminal behavior. In particular, the data focus on whether being a victim of violence and/or neglect in early childhood leads to being a criminal offender in adolescence or early adulthood and whether a relationship exists between childhood abuse or neglect and arrests as a juvenile, arrests as an adult, and arrests for violent offenses. For this data collection adult and juvenile criminal histories of sampled cases with backgrounds of abuse or neglect were compared to those of a matched control group with no official record of abuse or neglect.