So, after seeing the rates of recidivism amongst juvenile offenders, how can we change this? And what programs are currently in place to reduce these rates. NSW Government has Juvenile Justice centres which supervise and cares for young offenders within the community and in juvenile justice centres, they provide youth justice conferences for young offenders referred by the police or courts. There are currently 6 centres across the state which accommodate young offenders and offer health, educational and spiritual services.

Juvenile Justice system have programs and services in place that help youth offenders, these include bail assistance line, youth justice conferencing, community services, funded services, custodial services and youth on track.

Bail Assitance Line:

Provides an after-hours service for police who are considering granting conditional bail to a young person who is in their custody but who cannot be released as they cannot meet their bail conditions. This helps to minimise the entrenchment of young people in the juvenile justice system, to reduce the number of young people on remand in detention centres who can be safely supervised in the community to await their court date.

Youth Justice Conferencing:

Police and courts refer young people for youth justice conferences when they have committed eligible offences that are too serious for warnings or cautions, or they have exceeded the maximum number of cautions available to them. Conferences bring young offenders, their families and supporters face-to-face with victims, their supporters and police to discuss the crime and how people have been affected.

Community services:

The prime focus in the agency’s community-based interventions with juvenile offenders is to help address their offending behaviour in ways that have been proven to be effective in reducing the risks associated with reoffending and effectively supervise young offenders as they meet their legal obligations.

Funded services:

The Office of the Executive Director sets the strategic direction and supports the administration for the delivery of a range of targeted funded services to young people under the supervision of Juvenile Justice. Juvenile Justice works in collaboration with non-government organisations to deliver these services.

Custodial services:

The agency’s juvenile custodial services provide secure and safe care of young offenders who are sentenced to custody by the courts or who are remanded to custody in a juvenile justice centre pending the finalisation of their court matters.

Youth on track:

Youth on Track is an early intervention scheme for 10–17 year-olds that identifies and responds to young people at risk of long-term involvement in the criminal justice system.

 

But what can we do as everyday, normal Australians? I think the best and all that some of us can do, is to just reduce the stigma and the judgement that some of us on youth offenders, hell even anyone who has gone to prison. I am a firm believer in that everyone deserves a second chance and that we shouldn’t be so quick to judge someone based on their past or bad decisions that they have made. I think youth offenders cop more in society as they are younger and people blame their families and then just give up on them as they think, once a criminal always a criminal, which is not the case.

 

Juvenile Justice (2019). Juvenile Justice  http://www.juvenile.justice.nsw.gov.au/

 

So, we have spoken about what recidivism is and the youth justice system in Australia, so we have all the background info to get into the nitty-gritty of the rates of recidivism in Australia. Recidivism among youths is acknowledged to be a key indicator in the effectiveness of juvenile justice interventions and the programs that are in place.

82% of juveniles released from detention in 2015-2016, returned to supervision sentences within 12 months. Individuals who initially served short sentences were more likely to return than those who served a long sentence. Young Indigenous individuals were 1.7 times more likely as their non-Indigenous peers, to return to supervision sentences before the age of 18. Juveniles have a higher rate recidivism rate, 79% than adults, 56%, but for both parties, recidivism rates are higher amongst those who are convicted of a break and enter or robbery and lowest amongst those who are convicted of drink-driving. In NSW 2015 and 2016, 63.4% of juveniles reoffended within the next 12 months, and in 2017 this number rose to 64.4%.

The issue with juveniles re-offending is that a minority receive a large number of sentences before they turn 18. 1 in 6 (16%) of those whose first sentence was community-based and 1 in 4 (26%) whose first supervised sentence was detention received 5 or more supervised sentences when aged between 10-18.

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2018). Young people returning to sentenced youth justice supervision 2016–17, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/youth-justice/young-people-returning-sentenced-youth-justice/data

Australian Institute of Criminology. (2019). Measuring juvenile recidivism in Australia, https://aic.gov.au/publications/tbp/tbp044/measuring-juvenile-recidivism-australia

So, hopefully, know we all know what recidivism is and have a better understanding of it. Before I get into the statistics regarding recidivism of juveniles within in Australia, I believe we should all have a little knowledge about the youth justice system in Australia, to better understand recidivism and it never hurts to have more knowledge. Each state and territory in Australia has its own youth justice legislation, policies and practices. Young people can be charged for a crime form the age 10 and onwards, the age limit for the youth system is 17 in all states and territories but Queensland, where the age limit is 16. However, individuals over the age of 18 can be involved in the youth justice system when the individual committed a crime when they were aged 17 or under, supervision is continued once the individual turns 18 and the individual is particularly vulnerable or immature.

Young individuals first contact with the legal system is when police investigate them for allegedly committing a crime, then legal action taken by the police may include court actions (e.g. laying of charges to be answered in court) and non-court actions (cautions, counselling, conferencing or infringement notices). A court may decide to dismiss a charge, divert them to other services, or transfer them to specialist courts or programs. In Australia, young individuals who have been found guilty of an offence can be given an unsupervised community-based sentence (e.g. good behaviour bond), a supervised community-based sentence (e.g. probation), and a sentence of detention. The supervised community based and sentence of detention are known as ‘supervised sentences’ are used when collecting the data of recidivism rates within young people. 

Child Family Community Australia (2017) Youth Justice Supervision  https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/publications/intersection-between-child-protection-and-youth-justice-systems/youth-justice 

So, before we get into the depth of this topic, it’s important to know what we are talking about and get some broad knowledge and history. So recidivism, what is it? where is it? who does it apply to?

Recidivism refers to an individual repeating or relapsing committing a crime and returning to prison, it’s most commonly referred to as re-offending. Recidivism rates in Australia are staggering and a topic that needs to be talked about more and better solutions to be put into place. In 2017, Australia had 36,000 prisoners and was spending more than $2.6 billion a year keeping them there. NSW has the highest rates of recidivism, with about 48% of inmates who leave prison returning within two years. The 15,000 men and women who get released each year, only 300 get reintegration support through the major and one of the only providers, Community Restorative Centre. The centre provides men and women with a bed to sleep in, food to eat and people to work with, as a lot of them have lost contact or are not in contact with any loved ones. Loneliness and social isolation are the two key factors people return to prison.

In my opinion, there isn’t enough support and resources available for individuals once they have been released from prison. For a lot of them, they don’t have any family, friends or anyone to call to provide them with the basic necessities of food and shelter. For a lot of these indiviudals, they are being released into homelessness. Because they don’t have access to services, or they do put there isn’t enough, they are stuck in the streets, lonely, hungry, tired and frankly, scared. So a lot of them steal or commit a petty crime as they know they will be taken back to prison, where they know they will have a bed to sleep in, a roof over their head, food in their bellies and human interaction. It makes me so sad and angry to think, this is how people live their lives, in and out of prison because they aren’t provided with the basic human needs they are entitled to. In the upcoming blog posts, I will go into more detail about recidivism, more statistics.

 

Olding, Rachel (2016) ‘Call for complete rethink as prison population, recidivism explode,’ The Sydney Morning Herald

Officially my first blog post, how exciting!! This blog is going to be me talking about all things recidivism rates within Australia, particularly within juvenile offenders.  My blog will include the stats surrounding this, why it’s like this and what we can do to help solve the problem! So stay tuned for posts in the future and welcome to my blog 🙂