Treating and Preventing the Pedophile

I don't usually just link to an article but today is an expiation. A rather thoughtful piece on how we should approach and treat the pedophile is seen in this article on slate.com.

Child M Case in Edmonton

The Court of Queen's Bench in Edmonton rejected arguments to keep an abused child on life support. The parents, who are presently incarcerated facing charges related to the abuse of the girl and he twin sister, appealed to the Alberta Court of Appeal. The appeal was dismissed and that court ordered that medical staff should disconnect the life support in 24 hours. The family then sought to have the Supreme Court of Canada hear the case. This too failed.

According to The Globe and Mail the child has now died as a result of the cessation of the life support systems.. Charges against the parents may well be upgraded as a result of the death.

The crucial element for the child protection systems, is that the courts looked at the best interest of the child as the crucial basis upon which to make the determination. The court is reported to have concluded that the child was suffering on life support and had no apparent hope of returning to a productive state.

Media reports suggested that the parents argued that they should be making the decision. In essence, that is an argument for the best interest of the parents who claim that there desire to keep her alive was based on religious grounds. By siding with what was in child M's best interests, the courts have again affirmed that the priority of the child when parental and child's rights are in opposition. This certainly doesn't mean that will always be the result in all cases but it does continue to uphold an important principle.

Justice Ross of the Court of Queen's Bench stated in her decision at paragraph 66,

"From the perspective of that general societal understanding, the evidence in this case that

it is in M’s best interests that life-sustaining treatment be stopped is clear and uncontradicted. A large number of specialists have been involved in her care, and it is their unanimous recommendation that treatment be stopped. M has no awareness of her surroundings and is completely dependent on mechanical supports to live. The unchallenged evidence of the doctors is that she will never regain consciousness and be interactive. The evidence is also that she will require invasive treatment, imminently, in the form of a tracheostomy, simply to be maintained on the ventilator, and that she will continue to contract pneumonia or other infections, and may require further invasive treatments in response. There is no potential benefit to her from these treatments, as they will not improve her current condition."

She adds at paragraph 72:

In considering this submission, I keep in mind that my role is to consider only the best
interests of M, not those of her parents or any other person

The full decision, only 15 pages, can be found at the Alberta Courts Website 

Phoenix Sinclair Inquiry

While there is much evidence yet to come in the Manitoba Inquiry into the death of Phoenix Sinclair, one piece of it that emerged last week has an all too familiar ring to it. It is one that we have heard in so many of these inquiries in various countries - case loads that were too high. In this case, the social worker who was testifying spoke of initially having 40 cases to manage - an impossible number.

However, the worker goes on to explain that more than the case number, is the number of children being managed. She described that you could cut the caseload in half but still face over whelming demands with families that have high numbers of children.

Maybe it is not the number of cases that should be considered but the number of children that should be the gauge of what is too many.

Yet two fundamental problems would persist - 1. not enough social workers are being drawn into child protection work and 2. retaining those that are is challenging with high caseloads, complex needs and limited resources with which to work.

One hopes that as Justice Hughes works his way through this inquiry that he will look at some of the core issues facing child protection and social work. There will be more to think about as the evidence unfolds.

More evidence against increasing incarcerations

In the past, I have written about child protection issues that arise from a parent being incarcerated. These problems include fracturing family functioning, increasing the economic and social burden on the family and resulting in stresses that can then lead to neglect and other forms of maltreatment. Certainly, a case can be made that the needs of society may over ride those concerns, particularly with violent and repeat offenders. Thus, a new study by the PEW Centre on the States offers some fresh and articulate focus on the possible costs and benefits of incarceration.

The study, titled, Time Served, The high costs, low return of longer prison sentences, concludes that for a substantial number of offenders, "there is little or no evidence that keeping them locked up longer prevents additional crime" (p.4). That is a fairly significant conclusion particularly given the very high costs associated with incarceration. They also note that the public has become less focused on punishment and more focused on cost effectiveness and the use of tools to reduce recidivism. Good risk assessment can determine who is best for release and supervision.

The impact for families is not really measured in this work. But one also has to wonder what impact that children might have by a parent whose involvement with the criminal justice system is more focused on helping the parent address mental health or addiction issues. What lessons are there for the child? A society that supports positive change or one that is focused on punishment.

Consider that between 1990 and 2010, the US prison population grew by 109% at an average cost of around $24,000 per prisoner. They estimate that the extra time served without benefit is costing the US about $10 billion.

The argument is not about the violent offender who is likely to repeat his/her crime. It is about carefully determining who belongs in prison because reform will be unlikely to succeed. The report separates that there is a large amount of crime that is related to addictions, mental health and poverty. Treat the problem and your reduce the probability of further crime.

They also identify that work done to prepare the lower risk offender for reintegration into the community will positively impact the recidivism rate. Inmates who are poorly prepared for release struggle with integration and are then at higher risk to reoffend.  Creating a link to a rehabilitative approach seems to be socially desirable but also appears to have strong positive impacts on the costs of managing the criminal justice system. In times of high economic stress in countries, finding ways to reduce prison populations will reduce government expenditures. What this research tells us is that can be done without increasing risk to communities.

The report is available on the web through the PEW website.

Drug Courts can be quite effective fir child protection

Some lovely new research by Bruns et al. has shown that drug courts can be quite effective in working with substance abusing parents in the child protection system. This matters. As they point out, substance abuse is one of the most significant issues in child protection. They note prior research showing that it is related to higher involvement in foster care; longer duration in care and poorer reunification rates. In addition, they highlight that it can often take many months before parents are connected to needed treatment resources

Drug Treatment Courts have a solid history of working within the criminal court system in various jurisdictions.

The aim of most drug courts is to use the court process to facilitate a coordinated, team-based, and inter- disciplinary approach to treat individuals who have been charged with an offense related to their addiction or substance involvement (p.2).

Family Drug Treatment Courts aim to increase reunification, family safety as well as parental abstinence. To my knowledge, they are not yet common within the child protection system, so this review may well assist in raising such an approach as an important tool for child protection systems.

A study of four FTDCs in sites across the United States found that participants enrolled in treatment more quickly, received treat- ment services for a longer mean duration, and were more likely to complete treatment successfully than parents in regular dependency courts. (p.3).

However, the published research data base remains small and is not been subject to the kind of disciplined review that might give long term confidence. The present study helps to fill the gap and shows positive results including entering treatment faster, completing and having better child protection outcomes. The children were more frequently returned to parental care.

This promising research adds to the idea that structured, comprehensive substance abuse interventions that include the courts can substantially improve outcomes. This might be an approach that is worth considering in more jurisdictions.

Reference:

Bruns, E.J.,, Pullmann, M.D., Weathers, E.S., Wirschem, M.L. &. Murphy, J.K. (2012). Effects of a multidisciplinary family treatment drug court on child and family outcomes: Results of a quasi-experimental study. Child Maltreatment, In Press. doi: 10.1177/1077559512454216
 

 

Maybe abstinence sex education is harmful

There has been a movement in the religious right to push teenagers to commit to sexual abstinence. Per se, that does not seem like a negative thing. Trying to ensure that teenagers do not find themselves in unwanted parenthood or having to face decisions about what to do with an unwanted pregnancy seem like worthy goals.

Regrettably, that same movement would have abstinence education replace other forms of sexual education. I got to think about this after two recent experiences. The first was reading the 2005 book by Lisa Aronson Fontes, Child abuse and culture. She made reference to a doctoral dissertation by McDonald in 2004 which noted that most sex education occurs in adolescence which is after most victims of sexual abuse have been victimized. Fontes cogently points out that this further shames the victim who did not engage in sexual behavior by choice – but by coercion and force. What then are they to make of statements that they must save themselves for marriage and commit to abstinence? They are already sexually involved because of the abuse.

The second event was meeting with the Tulir Centre for Prevention and Healing of Sexual Abuse . Located in Chennai, India they talk about how victims are often quite young and clearly before they can receive sex education. Indeed, in many cases, they are not in a position to even understand what consent is about.

Sex education that offers children and teenagers information on choices but also helps victims to separate forced sex from sex by choice can help to prevent the unwanted pregnancies. These in turn can add to the children involved in child protection systems – but so too can rapes and molestation. Sex education should add to the efforts to prevent and heal sexual abuse and trauma. It should not be a way in which victims are then re-victimized. 

Crime Stats matter for child protection policy

Despite the fact that the Harper government in Canada has been on a law and order agenda, crime levels in Canada are now at their lowest since 1972. The Globe and Mail reports on new numbers from Statistics Canada stating:

The amount of crime, including violent offences, reported by Canadians dropped again last year, falling to the lowest level since 1972, though there were increases in homicides, some crimes against children and cannabis possession.

Bear in mind that these numbers come as Canada is greatly expanding mandatory minimum sentences that will place more people in jail for longer periods. This need data is part of a stream of data that shows locking most people up does not make things better. Most people benefit from the rehabilitative and preventative approaches that have been the hallmark of the Canadian justice system. Research in the UK recently showed that there is a need to incarcerate the very small numbers of people who represent the repeat criminal offenders and the very violent.

The implications of this new data for child protection are powerful. We simply don't need to be spending literally billions incarcerating people other than the noted group. That money is better spent on rehabilitation and prevention which will:

1. Allow more families to stay together;
2. Result in fewer children living without a parent for longer periods. Research keeps telling us about the importance of both parents to a child;
3. Reduce the intergenerational crime effect;
4. Reduce the increase in criminal and antisocial attitudes that are garnered through stays in prison and exposure to the prison population. This results in less contamination of those attitudes on children if the adult has not been incorporated into those beliefs through prison sentences;
5. Allow better economic outlooks for families who do not lose a potential or current bread winner.

Criminal justice policy has significant implications for child protection. These current stats in Canada should (but won't) cause policy makers to reconsider the sentencing approaches. We have seen some push back by the judiciary and hopefully data like this will cause more.