In order to establish the degree of overlap between the criminal justice and child welfare population in California, the CDN probabilistically linked California Department of Justice (DOJ) records for all individuals under age 25 who were arrested and booked in 2014 and 2015 with Child Protective Services (CPS) records dating back to 1998. Administrative data have been used to examine historical child protection involvement among incarcerated individuals, but this study is the first to leverage linked, administrative data to document the proportion of youth in California who were arrested or booked who had a history of child maltreatment. We found that, conservatively, 43% of those arrested/booked before age 25 had childhood allegations of abuse or neglect and 18% had been substantiated as victims. Additional analyses forthcoming.
