All records included in CANDID were generated from publicly available data sources, including: media articles, existing death archives (e.g., the Gun Violence Archive, Disability Day of Mourning, U.S. Child Murder & Divorce), state-issued child fatality case reports, and county medical examiner records. For each CANDID record, we have included one or more of the sources identified to date. In situations where a child died in a state that releases additional information about child fatalities (e.g., Florida), we have cross-referenced media articles with fatality summaries to resolve duplicate entries and expand the amount of information available. We continue to update source listings as older media reports are identified and new media coverage emerges, and as we continue to input existing and new state case notifications and reviews. Given the use of publicly available information, this project was deemed exempt by the UNC Chapel Hill’s Institutional Research Board (IRB).
An initial media search was conducted using Nexis Uni and the search terms below. Publication language was specified as English and publication location was restricted to North America. This search returned 11,750 web-based articles published between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2023. Each article was screened to assess whether it captured information about a child who had died in the United States. Articles were then reviewed to abstract basic information that allowed for a record to be generated in CANDID.
In addition to Nexis Uni, GoogleNews was used to conduct directed media searches by state and year. When ambiguous reports were identified (e.g., the child was unnamed or the circumstances were unclear in the initial report), specific searches based on names, dates, or location of death were used to determine whether more detailed information was available. When no additional information was available to determine whether the death was due to maltreatment, case information was recorded in a separate list to be periodically revisited to determine if updated findings were made public.
A minority of states publish case notifications, summaries or reviews of child maltreatment deaths. Specifically, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington, and Wisconsin publish reviews of certain suspected or confirmed fatality cases. The set of cases covered varies widely from all suspected maltreatment fatalities to confirmed maltreatment fatalities in families that had contact with child welfare within a year of the fatality. A few other states (Arkansas, Nevada, and Rhode Island) publish notifications of suspected maltreatment fatalities but no case reviews. Indiana and Virginia include limited case-specific information in annual child maltreatment fatality reports. (See the individual state pages for links to the information that each state provides.) We cross-check each state notification or review against all cases known from media reports so as to avoid duplication and add to the information already available on a case for which we previously had media sources only. Many of these cases have not been covered in the media. We are in the process of adding these cases to CANDID with the help of volunteers who are interested in serving as a conduit for information from their states. We welcome offers of assistance from advocates and scholars who want to help enter information from their states.
Broadly, we rely on the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) definition of a maltreatment death as the death of a child as a result of abuse or neglect because of: “(a) an injury resulting from abuse and/or neglect was the cause of death; or (b) abuse and/or neglect were contributing factors to the cause of death” (p.36). Official counting of child maltreatment fatalities is limited to cases in which a person responsible for the death was a parent, adult household member, or otherwise responsible for the care of the child. Cases involving children killed by strangers or individuals not in caregiving roles are not included unless there was evidence of caregiver negligence. Given our reliance on media coverage to identify children who died of maltreatment, most cases in CANDID required little review: the media is most likely to cover deaths in which the manner was classified as a homicide and/or where there was an arrest of a parent or caretaker.
We encourage interested users to review cases and alert us to any you think we have inaccurately included based on other information that may be available! We welcome feedback and corrections. And, of course, please let us know if there are cases we have missed.
CANDID currently captures children who died in 2022, 2023, or 2024. There are, however, often significant lags between a fatality and the determination by that it was due to maltreatment and/or the decision by the criminal justice system to file charges. Therefore we may learn of more cases that occurred in these years as charges are filed (triggering media reports) or states add notifications and case reviews to their websites or publish case summaries as part of their annual reports on child maltreatment fatalities. Children are included based on the date the death occurred, not the injury incident date or the date the death was reported to the public. When the exact date of death was unclear, but death was clearly recent and occurred after 2022, we recorded the date the child was found.
Many media reports do not include children’s names. In those cases, we record the age and (if available) gender of the child. Most reports do include the name of a parent or adult perpetrator and those are recorded and cross-referenced in the data to make sure unnamed children are not entered multiple times from different sources. For those children whose names are already a part of the public record, we report that information in full. If we identified more than one version of a child’s name in media coverage, we listed the spelling we thought most likely based on attempts to identify additional information.
A child’s age is recorded in CANDID based on their age at the time of death. We have done our best to accurately report a child’s exact age based on information available in source documents. In situations where we were unable to determine a child’s age, we simply defaulted to the age description from the source (e.g., toddler, child).
Our team is actively working to add additional records to our database – and to develop a more comprehensive understanding of each child’s death through additional sources. All data we identify and information we gather will be made public through our site. Additional records, above and beyond the 2000 cases published at project launch, will be released at least monthly. Please feel free to register to receive periodic notifications of larger project updates and data releases.
The Lives Cut Short project is housed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and funded by the Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility at the American Enterprise Institute. Putnam-Hornstein discloses having received a one time $500 honorarium from AEI for past participation in a Child Welfare Working Group.