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

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Recidivism in Australia: findings and future research
Summary and comparative analysis
There have been only a few studies in Australia examining recidivism in the general adult
offender population. Unlike prison populations who are relatively easy to identify, general
offender populations are more difficult to sample. More often than not, research relies
on the identification of convenience samples of, for example, police arrestees or community
corrections participants. This variation in sample selection results in some differences in the
estimation of recidivism. Of the four studies presented, each varied in their sample, data,
location and observation period. Not surprisingly, this resulted in different recidivism
estimates, but which overall suggested that:
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around half of police arrestees self-report having been arrested at least once in the
past 12 months, with 18 percent imprisoned in that time
more than 60 percent of police arrestees will be rearrested within ten years, but with
high volume offender samples being arrested in much shorter time frames
about one in four adult offenders released from a community corrections order will
return to corrections (either as an additional community services or other custodial
order) within two years.
Juvenile detainee recidivism
There is no systematic national data collection which provides information about the prevalence
of prior imprisonment among juvenile detainees. Recently however, the Australian Institute of
Health and Welfare established a national minimum dataset for juvenile justice. It collects data
on juvenile contact and multiple episodic contact with the juvenile justice system (AIHW 2006),
although the results were not yet available at the time of writing this report.
As with adult prisoners, juvenile detainees are a select group of offenders who can be
relatively easily identified through their participation in a custodial corrections order.
For this reason, both self-reported and administrative analyses have been conducted
to measure the extent of their recidivism and contact with the criminal justice system.
Table 9 provides a summary of five key Australian research studies that have used
samples of juvenile detainees in their analysis of recidivism.