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

Underestimating offending
To appear in court, an offender needs to have been apprehended and charged by the police,
so court appearance data inherit all the limitations previously noted for police apprehension
and arrest data. It is only in a small number of cases, such as matter prosecuted by agencies
other than the police, that an offence may appear in the court records without having first
appeared in police databases. However, in the majority of cases, offences not detected by
police for the range of reasons previously mentioned will not be identifiable in court records.
Moreover, court appearance data have the potential to further underestimate offending
because not all police apprehensions proceed to court. For example:
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not all criminal apprehensions have sufficient evidence to be proven beyond reasonable
doubt in court and so the matter is dropped at the prosecutorial stage
some criminal apprehensions may be diverted to processing options other than court.
This is particularly true in the case of juveniles, who, in most jurisdictions, can be dealt
with either by way of a formal police caution or a family conference, without the need
to bring the matter to court. In South Australia for example approximately 60 percent
of apprehensions per year are dealt with either through a formal police caution or family
conference, without the matter ever coming before the Youth Court.
Conviction data, measured at the end point of the court process, provide an even smaller
pool of cases because:
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some charges may be dropped or negotiated away as a result of a plea negotiation
some cases may not result in a finding of guilt.
Key elements of recidivism
There is one added complexity inherent in the way the court organises its work that may result
in underestimation of both appearances and convictions. This occurs when the same defendant
is facing charges arising from more than one apprehension event that all are being processed
through the court at roughly the same time. It is not uncommon, particularly in the case of recidivist
offenders, for an individual to have several court cases being processed at the same time, but in
different courts on different days and before different judicial officers. At some point, the decision
may be made to consolidate all current files and charges into a single case. Hence, what may
have started off as three distinct matters will, at the point of disposition and sentence, be combined
into one single case.
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