Social outrage and organizational behavior: A national study of child protective service decisions

In this paper, we extend to CPS, a risk model commonly employed in the fields of environmental science, food safety and chemical engineering, where risk is conceptualized as a function of both technical hazard and social outrage. Much as Jagannathan and Camasso (2011, 2013) did, we argue that child fatalities resulting from maltreatment and the social outrage they often engender serve to influence CPS operations by altering CPS worker and child welfare organizational decision rules. In our empirical analyses, we test for an independent effect of social outrage (captured by child fatalities) on worker decisions while controlling for hazard and other relevant determinants. We also test whether this relationship is mediated by child welfare reform measures undertaken via judicial interventions or class action litigation. Using data from NCANDS (n=1122 state-year observations over a 22year time period across all 50 states and District of Columbia) and panel regression methods we show that social outrage caused by child fatalities significantly and directly influence child welfare worker decisions to: accept a referral of alleged maltreatment for investigation, substantiate reports of maltreatment, and place children out-of-home. •Expansion of risk conceptualization to include social outrage emanating from child maltreatment fatalities (CMFs).•Proposed model of CPS decision making that includes social outrage measures in addition to the usual hazard measures.•Empirical testing of model using NCANDS data on all 50 states and D.C. over a 22 year period and panel analytic methods.•Discussion of the limitations of statistical models in predicting low base rate events like CMFs.•Recommendations for research that promises to yield a more complete understanding of CMFs.