Foster Care and Justice Involvement

This chapter delves into the relationship between child maltreatment, focusing on youth with foster care experience, and justice involvement beginning with Cathy Spatz Widom's (1989) groundbreaking research. A literature review of studies examining the offending trajectories of youth aging out of care follows. The review outlines what research indicates as risk and protective factors of offending among foster youth. Risk factors considered include sex, race, multiple placements, age of first placement, type of placement, child maltreatment, substance abuse, and mental illness. Two protective factors highlighted are being in extended foster care and education.