RE: drug markets and child maltreatment

["Bridget Freisthler" <BFreisthler@xxxxxxxx>]

It seems to me that you bring up two points 1) the best way of measuring illicit drug markets/activity and child maltreatment and 2) the utility of ecological studies.  I've studied both issues in depth, and will try to provide some clarity.  As a warning, the e-mail below is quite long.
 
1) Specifically, drug arrests can be problematic for the reason you suggest, but also because the location of the arrest may not directly correspond to the location of illicit drug sales markets.  For example, a drug dealer who is not caught in the act of selling, but implicated by lower level 'associates' may be arrested at home, which may or may not be the location of where s/he does the selling.  For this reason, criminologists studying drug markets will use drug incidents or 'calls for service.'  Granted this too can be problematic because they may be related to police presence in an area.
 
More generally, drug markets are very difficult things to measure well.  Ethnographers can often get very specific information about the workings of one market, but with such a low sample size, the information lacks generalizability.  The problems with police data, which is more readily accessible (and therefore cheaper) have been described above.  Survey data can be biased due to an individual's drug use and need to know where the markets are.  However, police data has been commonly accepted as one valid way to measure drug activity (and is much cheaper), as long as the caveats provided above are noted.
 
For child maltreatment, the same issues apply.  Again, researchers note the limitations of official 'reports' but they do provide some good information.  Population-based studies are hampered by social desirability bias.  I think researchers are making great strides in better estimating both child maltreatment and drug market activity, but there is still more to be done.
 
2)  The past 2 decades or so, there has been an increase in the number and type of neighborhood studies.  The idea is that neighborhood processes and dynamics (over and above family, parental, and individual characteristics) may place children at greater risk for maltreatment.  
 
In a focus group I did with case workers (the results of which have recently been published in Children and Youth Services Review",  a caseworker commented on one mother's strategy for handling the fear created by this having drug dealers highly visible in the neighborhood "*the mother says I don't let my kid go out and play.  Well now, come on, you don't want a seven or eight year old under foot all the time, but you're scared if he goes out, so you're telling him you can't do this or you don't want to be hooked up with him so that's a real avenue for 'shut up, get in your room' or this kind of stuff."  This caseworker was concerned that such a situation could lead to physical or emotional abuse.
 
Here the issue is not an individual's parents own drug use behaviors, but the environment created by having visible and potentially dangerous drug markets in the neighborhood.  My interests lie in using information about these neighborhood dynamics to create places that place children at lesser risk for abuse or neglect. Such environmental change (which has proved very successful in the reduction of alcohol-related problems, see Harold Holder, Paul Gruenewald, and others, Journal of the American Medical Association, 2000) provides an additional and complentary means of preventing child maltreatment.
 
I am attaching a copy of a poster I (along with Barbara Needell and Paul Gruenwald) presented at SSWR last year that looks at drug activity and child maltreatment in more detail.  The reference is:
 
Freisthler, B., Needell, B., & Gruenewald, P.J. "The role of social disorganization and drug and alcohol availability in neighborhood rates of child maltreatment."  Poster presented at the Society for Social Work and Research annual meeting. New Orleans, LA, January 15 * 18, 2004.

I would be interested in hearing others thoughts/comments and any anecdotal information about this topic.

Bridget

Bridget Freisthler, Ph.D., Assistant Professor
Department of Social Welfare, UCLA School of Public Affairs
3250 Public Policy Building, Box 951656, Los Angeles, CA 90095
(Phone) 310/206-16022 (Fax) 310/206-75641
(e-mail) freisthler@sppsr.ucla.edu

 

>>> lfontes@rcn.com 10/06/04 2:31 PM >>>
This study feels a bit problematic to me for several reasons. For
instance, we know that drug use is similar for whites and blacks, but
drug arrests are way higher for blacks. So, what is the point, exactly,
of studying drug ARRESTS? Arrests don't necessarily correlate to drug
use or even sales (alcohol and prescription drug abuse, for instance,
rarely lead to arrest, but can lead to intoxication that contributes to
child abuse and neglect). So what I think you're going to end up finding
is that-yes-where the police have a high presence you will find high
rates of both drug ARRESTS and child maltreatment REPORTS. But this will
not have much to do with any real correlation between drug/alcohol use
or child maltreatment occurrence, both of which occur but are not
generally discovered/prosecuted among the wealthy and the White. Once
again, the communities where some people make their living in the drug
trade will be stigmatized.
 
I'd be interested in others' opinions-perhaps there's something I'm not
grasping here.
 
Respectfully,
Lisa Fontes, Ph.D.
Springfield COllege
 
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-CHILD-MALTREATMENT-RESEARCH-L@cornell.edu
[mailto:owner-CHILD-MALTREATMENT-RESEARCH-L@cornell.edu] On Behalf Of
David Crampton
Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 2004 11:50 AM
To: Child Maltreatment Researchers
Subject: drug markets and child maltreatment
 
We are developing a study of drug markets and child maltreatment and
would appreciate any references to previous work.  While there are drug
arrests through out Cleveland and the suburbs there are some
neighborhoods with high numbers of drug arrests (for possession and
selling) and we are curious how they relate to child maltreatment
victims' addresses.  I know there is a lot of research on parental
substance abuse and child welfare and a bit on children exposed to
methamphetamine labs, but I have not found much related to drug arrests
and child maltreatment.
 
Thanks, David
 
 
David Crampton, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences
Case Western Reserve University
10900 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, OH  44106-7164
216-368-6680
 


Attachment Converted: "c:\docume~1\aa17\applic~1\qualcomm\eudora\attach\SSWR04.pdf"