Child Abuse Reported to the Police. Crimes against Children Series. Juvenile Justice Bulletin.

The purpose of the Crimes against Children Series is to improve and expand the national effort to serve child victims by presenting the latest information on child victimization. When a child is assaulted it is not only a child welfare problem, it is a crime, yet there is a lack of data available for researchers to analyze. Use of the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), which collects data about crime and its victims, would help fill this gap. This document reports on the NIBRS and its role in depicting police experiences with child abuse. Key findings are included from NIBRS data. It offers a comparison of NIBRS and child welfare system data and discusses the policy implications arising from NIBRS data. Policymakers concerned about child welfare need to know the full extent of harm perpetrated against children. A clearer understanding is needed of which categories of incidents are handled by child welfare and which are handled by law enforcement to better understand and respond to the needs of maltreated children. (Contains 6 figures and 15 references.) (JDM)