Mechanisms of Inequity: The Impact of Instrumental Biases in the Child Protection System

Emily Keddell
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Emily Keddell: Social and Community Work Programme, University of Otago, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand

Societies, 2022, vol. 12, issue 3, 1-19

Abstract: The structural risk perspective conceptualizes the causes of inequities in child protection system contact as unequal exposure to the structural causes of child abuse risk, combined with biases in the responses of child welfare workers and reporters. This conceptual article proposes a third mechanism of inequity: instrumental biases. It is proposed that instrumental biases operate as a third group of mechanisms that inequitably increase the involvement of some groups and not others. Instrumental biases operate through institutional structures, interpretive concepts and risk proxies that affect how risk is coded and becomes attached to particular people. Against the background of the notify-investigate model that creates poor conditions for decision making, and shapes institutional structures, instrumental biases include the miscalibration of the demand and supply of services (an institutional cause); family-specific surveillance bias and a reliance on prior case histories (a risk proxy cause); widening legal definitions of serious harm (an interpretive concept cause); and complex responses to intimate partner violence that minimize theories of IPV and the social context it occurs within (concept and risk proxy causes). It is argued that within the decision-making context of the child protection system, how services are structured and risk becomes codified has disproportionate impacts on some communities compared to others. Examples from Aotearoa New Zealand, with reference to Māori and people living in high-deprivation areas, are used to illustrate these concepts.

Keywords: inequalities; child protection; decision making; Aotearoa New Zealand; Indigenous; instrumental bias; disproportionality; notify-investigate (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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