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

30
Recidivism in Australia: findings and future research
A more significant source of overestimation occurs in those studies which consider any
re-entry to prison or community supervision as evidence of fresh offending. An offender
need not be convicted of or sentenced for an offence to be incarcerated or placed under
supervision. The classic situation is where an offender is remanded into custody or placed
on supervised bail either at the time arrest or at some stage during the court case, but is
subsequently acquitted and released. There is also the problem that the same individual
may be remanded but then released on bail numerous times during the processing of
a case. If each remand episode is counted as recidivism, this will significantly overestimate
the level of reoffending.
Misrepresenting time
As the final step in the chronology of the criminal justice system, episodes of imprisonment
or community based orders, when imposed as part of a sentence, inevitably commence
some time after a conviction in court because sentencing is often adjourned by the court
to a later date. The date of admission into custody may therefore occur months, or even
years after the offence was committed. This is particularly the case if an appeal is lodged.
In some situations, where an offender has been sentenced to imprisonment, but appeals
that sentence, the court may release them pending the outcome of their appeal.
The obvious exception to this rule is remand, where an offender will be recorded as entering
custody or community supervision well before they are convicted. In fact, for defendants
who have been arrested and refused both police and court bail, the remand episode will
more closely coincide with the date of the first court hearing rather than the last.
Illustration
Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each criminal justice data source is important
in understanding the criminal justice concept of recidivism. However, with so many complex
issues to consider (including others that are not highlighted here) it is sometimes difficult to
conceptualise how each data system really affects capacity to identify criminal events. To tie
this together, this section describes a hypothetical recidivism study that seeks to examine the
extent to which 100 newly released prisoners commit new offences within two years of their
release. Figure 4 depicts the post-release offending behaviour of just one of these offenders.
The figure includes five arrows travelling from left to right, each indicating the number of offending
episodes committed by the offender according to five different data sources. The first is a measure
of total actual offending, represented by self-reported data. The second is measured using
police apprehension data, followed by court appearance data, court conviction data and
finally, sentenced imprisonment data as recorded by the corrective services agency.