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

Juvenile arrestee self-reported prior arrest and imprisonment
Unlike the AIC’s juvenile DUCO study, there is no national systematic collection of self-reported
recidivism data for a generalised sample of juvenile offenders. As with adult offenders, identifying
and sampling juveniles using self-report is difficult and costly. One study, the AIC’s DUMA project,
surveys juvenile police detainees in two NSW police stations: Bankstown and Parramatta. In 2005,
101 juveniles were surveyed, of whom just over half (50% in Bankstown and 55% in Parramatta)
reported having been arrested in the past 12 months. Only three percent reported spending time
in detention (Mouzos, Smith and Hind 2006).
The authors caution on the use of these results and their generalisation to the broader juvenile
offender population because ‘the police are sometimes able to deal with juveniles away from
the police station, parents can refuse access to the young person and … the young person
can refuse to participate despite the parent agreeing to the interview.’ (Mouzos, Smith and
Hind 2006: 25).
Rearrest of juvenile police arrestees
Recidivism in Australia
A cohort study, conducted in South Australia provides a unique opportunity to examine the
extent to which a sample of juveniles will have multiple episodes of contact with the police
before the age of 18 years (Skrzypiec 2005). In this study, police apprehension data were
used to estimate the proportion of all persons born in 1984 who had been apprehended by
the police at least once before the age of 18 years, and for those persons, any subsequent
episodes of apprehension. Recidivism in this study was defined as two or more apprehensions
before the age of 18 years.
Skrzypiec found that approximately 10 percent of the birth cohort were apprehended once
only and seven percent were apprehended on more than one occasion before the age of
18 years. Of all persons apprehended, about 44 percent were apprehended twice, and the
average number of apprehensions was 2.7.
There are some limitations to the use of police apprehension data, especially when used to
measure recidivism among juvenile offenders. First, apprehension data contain information
about only those offences committed by an individual that come to the attention of the
police. They exclude matters that are not reported or where there was insufficient evidence
to warrant an apprehension. Moreover, the police apprehension data may also exclude an
offender’s informal contact with the police, such as offences that result in cautioning or
diversion. Among juveniles, where both formal and informal cautioning are used most
frequently this is likely to contribute considerably to the underestimation of juvenile offending.
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