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

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Recidivism in Australia: findings and future research
Unlike DUMA (Mouzos, Smith and Hind 2006) which looks at an offender’s retrospective arrest
history, this project followed offenders prospectively. Using a Weibull mixture model in survival
analysis, the authors estimated the probability that an offender would be rearrested within
10 years of their first arrest. The key results suggested that the probability of being
rearrested was:
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0.61 for male non-Indigenous offenders and 0.88 for male Indigenous offenders aged
between 18 and 21 years (equivalent to 61% or 88% rearrested within 10 years)
0.45 for male non-Indigenous offenders and 0.82 for male Indigenous offenders aged
between 21 and 25 years
0.31 for male non-Indigenous offenders and 0.48 for male Indigenous offenders aged
40 years or more.
Another prospective analysis of recidivism was the ACT Recidivist Offenders Study undertaken
by the AIC in 2004 (Makkai et al. 2004). The study, commissioned by the ACT Department
of Justice and Community Safety analysed rearrest rates in a sample of high volume property
offenders in the Australian Capital Territory. It formed part of an evaluation of a 16-week
intelligence led, targeted policing operation during which ACT Policing apprehended 232
property offenders, most of whom were well known high-volume offenders. The evaluation
observed each episode of police arrest before and after the first arrest during the operation
for up to 18 months. The study found that:
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in terms of prior offending, 77 percent of the offenders had at least one previous arrest,
and 18 percent had been arrested 15 or more times before being arrested during the
police operation; these offenders accounted for 62 percent of all prior arrest episodes
recorded by the sample
sixty-four percent of the offenders were rearrested within 18 months for at least
one other offending episode
the average number of days before being rearrested was 311.
The ACT Recidivist Offenders Study was unique in that it used recidivism to assess the
effectiveness of a policing operation – something normally undertaken using aggregate
police data rather than individual recidivism data. Despite this, the results should be
considered conservatively because they are not representative of general offender
recidivism rates. To be included in the sample, offenders must have been apprehended
by the police during the police operation which specifically targeted high volume property
offenders. This means that the recidivism estimates may be inflated compared with the
general offending population.