Contact with the police, as the first contact with the criminal justice system for young people and children, may signify individuals who are vulnerable to later adverse social and health outcomes. However, little is known about how often children have contact with police or for what reason. In this paper, we provide a demographic profile of the prevalence and reasons for police contact among a representative, longitudinal, population-based sample of 91,631 young people in New South Wales, Australia. By 13 years of age, almost one in six (15.6%) children had contact with police as a victim, person of interest and/or witness on at least one occasion. The most common reason for contact with police was in relation to an assault. There was considerable overlap among children who had been in contact with police on more than one occasion for different reasons, with those having police contact as a person of interest or witness being seven times more likely to have also been in contact with police as a victim in a separate incident, than children not known to police. We show that contact with the police is surprisingly common among children and suggest that early interventions for children in contact with police might prevent a range of adverse outcomes not limited to criminal offending.

中文翻译：

---

澳大利亚新南威尔士州儿童作为受害者、相关人员和证人与警方的接触

与警察的接触，作为青少年和儿童与刑事司法系统的第一次接触，可能意味着个人容易受到日后不利的社会和健康结果的影响。然而，人们对儿童与警察接触的频率或原因知之甚少。在本文中，我们提供了澳大利亚新南威尔士州 91,631 名年轻人的代表性纵向人口样本中警察接触的流行率和原因的人口统计资料。到 13 岁时，几乎六分之一 (15.6%) 的儿童至少在一次作为受害者、相关人员和/或证人与警方接触。与警方联系的最常见原因是与袭击有关。由于不同原因多次与警察接触的儿童之间存在相当大的重叠，那些作为感兴趣的人或证人与警察接触的儿童也作为受害者与警察接触的可能性是其他儿童的七倍在另一起事件中，警察不认识的儿童除外。我们表明，与警察的接触在儿童中出奇地普遍，并表明对与警察接触的儿童进行早期干预可能会防止一系列不良后果，不仅限于刑事犯罪。