Recidivism in Australia : findings and future research - Australian ...

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Recidivism in Australia: findings and future research
Priorities in recidivism research
Recidivism is a key issue on the criminal justice agenda. Preventing reoffending and reducing
reincarceration are, among others, key priorities for both state and federal governments –
and they should be, because the research clearly shows that a minority of offenders are
responsible for the majority of crime.
This report has been focused on improving understanding of recidivism in Australia. It undertook
the task of piecing together the underlying conceptual and methodological framework to show
that recidivism can be measured in many ways and used for a variety of purposes. At a macro
level, recidivism rates provide information that can be used to model the future flow of offenders
through the criminal justice system. They can also act as crude performance measures over time
as well as to identify whether the criminal justice system is still dealing with a similarly constituted
population. On a smaller scale, recidivism measures can be employed to evaluate specific
interventions, or to better understand a particular offender group and its likelihood of reoffending.
Both levels of analysis have an important place in the future of crime and criminal justice
policy development.
Sections one and two of this report described how the context and purpose of recidivism
research shapes the methodological decisions made by researchers attempting to measure
it. Section three took a closer look at the Australian recidivism literature, describing consistencies
and differences in the key findings and their potential relationship to contextual and methodological
variations. The report concludes by highlighting that recidivism is best understood, not as
a generic term, but rather as a multifaceted term shaped by the purpose and context
of within which it is measured. In turn, this determines the specification of the three
key elements of recidivism:
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the sample – decisions about who, when and where recidivism analysis is conducted
the indicator events – the data used to identify them and the rules for counting them
the observation period – the length of time over which these events are observed.
During this analysis and discussion a number of issues arose. The first was the lack
of consistency in the reporting of recidivism research. Of all the independent studies
conducted and contributing to the growing evidence base in Australia, there is no
consistency how the methodological elements of each study are reported.
Although the information is often available, it is not often described in a simple
and systematic fashion that allows the consumers of that research – the policy
makers and other researchers – to digest and understand it with ease.