Different trends in offending by juveniles in foster care and children's homes in Hungary

• In Event: Improving Justice for Youth (?): Case Studies from Belgium, Greece, Hungary & UK

Abstract

The results of international and Hungarian research also confirm that the group of children growing up in Alternative Care of Children is a well-defined and significant group among juvenile offenders (Pap 2007; Solt 2012; Berger et al 2016; Malvaso-Delfabbro-Day 2017). Both child protection and judicial statistics show that the participation of children in Alternative Care of Children in juvenile delinquency is significant compared to their ratio in the total population. It is also notable that children living in children's homes are overrepresented among them.
In my exploratory qualitative research, I seek to answer the question of what differences are observed in the involvement of children in Alternative Care of Children in delinquency from the perspective of the child protection institutional system. I conducted interviews with different professionals (N=15) working in child protection institutions. This research is embedded in a larger research project on the crime prevention potential of the child protection system.
The results of the present research shed light on anomalies in the functioning of the institutional system, which are determinant for the different delinquency tendencies of children in the Alternative Care of Children.

Author

• Karolina Balogh, Eötvös Lorand University; HUN-REN Centre for Social Sciences