Family Crimes Against the Elderly: Elder Abuse and the Criminal Justice System

Approaching elder abuse by family members as a criminal justice issue, this book examines law enforcement's potential for detection of family crimes against the elderly by offspring. It includes findings of a survey of 295 police complaint reports in New York City involving Manhattan residents aged 60 years old or older against whom an alleged crime by an offspring was reported. The demographic profile of victims in the study differed significantly on selected variables from people aged 60 and older in New York City in two major areas: they were disproportionately African American and disproportionately fell into the "young-old" category (60-74 years). Abusers were overwhelmingly male, and were usually the sons of their victims. The study concludes that law enforcement agencies are a significant source of information about elder abuse and an underestimated resource in addressing it. Police can be valuable in frontline detection of elder abuse, and the community policing program provides an excellent opportunity for expanding elder abuse detection and prevention. Social workers, however, have skills that make them more suitable than police for undertaking assessments and ongoing interventions with elderly victims and their families. As a result, the author recommends that collaborative projects be developed and expanded between police and social workers, and that the social work profession should consider forensic social work as an emergent field of practice