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

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40 Recidivism in Australia: findings and future research Another example is a sub-category of offending known generically as breaches, which typically includes technical violations of criminal justice orders, such as violating the conditions of parole, a probation order or drug court order. Breaches may also include violations of a domestic violence order, apprehended violence order, or even the failure to pay a court imposed fine by the nominated time. In many studies of recidivism, all of these offences are grouped together as indicators of the offender’s contravention of criminal justice and law enforcement orders, while in others, the nature of a particular breach is important and examined separately. In an evaluation of a drug court for example, researchers may be specifically interested in technical violations of a drug court order as a separate category from other breach offences. Regardless of which offences are included under a broad offence typology, what is more important is whether this information is accurately conveyed to the reader, and whether classification differences are taken into account when comparing the results from such research. Having an appreciation of the variability between different studies is critical to understanding and interpreting them accurately. How should the indicator event be counted? Once a data source has been selected and an appropriate definition of reoffending determined, the next decision concerns the counting rules to be applied to the data. To understand the choices available, it is necessary to understand the individual units that comprise a particular dataset. Take, for example, police apprehension data. Table 2 illustrates a hypothetical (but quite realistic) situation where on a particular day, an offender broke into a house while the owner was at home, assaulted the owner, vandalised the property and stole the owner’s vehicle. Several hours later on the same day, the offender used that vehicle as the get-away car in an armed robbery of a service station. Several weeks later, having identified the suspect, police went to arrest him, but the offender resisted arrest and assaulted the arresting officers. As a result, he was arrested and charged with seven separate offences. Four different counting units could be applied to this example: • • Each of the seven charges on the arrest form could be counted separately, giving a total of seven events of recidivism Charges arising from the same offence event could be aggregated, with an event defined as those charges involving the same victim. In this example, this would result in a count of three because the seven charges involved three different victims (the home owner, the service station and the apprehending police officer)
• • Each offence event could be aggregated into offence episodes, defined as those offences committed on the same day. In this example, because the housebreak and robbery occurred on the same day, they would be counted as one episode while the resist arrest/ assault police charges would constitute a second episode Finally, all charges on the one arrest form could be aggregated. In effect, the counting unit becomes the arrest itself. Depending on the level of aggregation used by the researcher, recidivism for this individual could be counted as seven, three, two or one events of recidivism. Table 2: Sample police apprehension data and event counting Key elements of recidivism Offending event Daily offence event Charge UID Offence date Offence Apprehension date 12345 14/05/2006 Break and enter 1/06/2006 1 1 1 1 12345 14/05/2006 Property damage 1/06/2006 2 1 1 1 12345 14/05/2006 Assault 1/06/2006 3 1 1 1 12345 14/05/2006 Vehicle damage 1/06/2006 4 1 1 1 12345 14/05/2006 Robbery 1/06/2006 5 2 1 1 12345 1/06/2006 Assault police 1/06/2006 6 3 2 1 12345 1/06/2006 Resist arrest 1/06/2006 7 3 2 1 This process of aggregation is commonly used in recidivism analysis. While it can be applied to self-report data, aggregation is more often an artefact of administrative data where one or more offences are aggregated into an administrative event. An apprehension report, for example, is an aggregation process that is a byproduct not only of the individual’s offending pattern but also the police response to that offending. Similarly, a single court appearance may involve multiple charges spread across multiple offending events and a single imprisonment may result from multiple charges listed on multiple court files combined for the purposes of sentencing. Arrest event 41
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