NCJ Number
227091
Date Published
2008
Length
224 pages
Annotation
This text explores the laws and values that underlie legal responses to child maltreatment.
Abstract
Recent developments in the law's approach to expertise potentially have profound implications for responses to child maltreatment. This text attempts to investigate the law's general response to children's harms and the pressing need to revisit those legal responses so that they could benefit from emerging understandings of the nature of child maltreatment. Chapter 1 details the laws' foundations and highlights broad legal orientations that would remain faithful to them. Chapter 2 introduces the legal and political justifications for the most important rule regulating the rights of children, the rights of parents. Chapter 3 addresses the fundamental questions that emerge from a system that attaches priority to parental rights; it examines who legally counts as a parent. Chapter 4 transitions the book from principles and rules regulating the internal working of families; the focus is on legal responses to child maltreatment, what constitutes child maltreatment and defines the types of relationships States will tolerate as permissible and defines which of those relationships are healthy and unhealthy. Chapter 5 details the nature of legal systems that regulate interventions in children's relationships by focusing on laws that address the potential, temporary, or permanent removal of children from their homes. Chapter 6 explores legal issues that arise in criminal justice responses to child maltreatment. Chapter 7 examines developments in standards used to determine whether certain types of evidence are adequate enough to be considered in efforts to resolve disputes. Chapter 8 highlights results of the analyses; it reveals the diversity and complexity of child protective systems in terms of both civil and criminal justice system responses. Appendix, references, and index