Trends in juvenile detention in Australia

Description

An overview of key trends in juvenile detention in Australia since 1981 is provided in this paper, based on data contained in the Australian Institute of Criminology’s Juveniles in Detention in Australia Monitoring Program database. In addition, two key trends in juvenile detention in Australia are discussed. First, the substantial increase in the proportion of juvenile detainees that is remanded, rather than sentenced, is identified as a concerning trend. A number of potential drivers for the increased use of remand are outlined in this paper. It is argued that the apparent increase in the use of remand should be a key focus of future juvenile justice research. Second, the over-representation of Indigenous juveniles continues to be an important issue to be addressed. Although rates of Indigenous over-representation have increased steadily, this appears to be due to decreases in rates of non-Indigenous juveniles in detention rather than increases in rates of Indigenous juveniles in detention. It is argued that rather than attempting to determine how juvenile justice policies have failed to keep Indigenous juveniles out of detention, consideration might be given to what has worked in reducing rates of non-Indigenous juveniles in detention.

Copyright Information

Disclaimer Material appearing at this site constitutes copyright of the Australian Institute of Criminology, the Commonwealth of Australia or the Criminology Research Council unless otherwise endorsed. Material on this site does not necessarily reflect the policy position of the Australian Government. Material on this site is intended for your general use and information. You may distribute any copies of downloaded material, in unaltered, complete form only, for your personal, non-commercial use subject to proper attribution of the Australian Institute of Criminology, the Commonwealth of Australia and other authors as the case may be. All other rights are reserved. Requests for further authorisation should be directed to: Manager, Communications and Information Services Australian Institute of Criminology GPO Box 2944 Canberra ACT 2601 Australia Contact the Institute Note: The Australian Institute of Criminology (the Institute) and the Commonwealth of Australia accept no responsibility for the content, accuracy or completeness of any material contained on this site or through links available at this site and recommend that users exercise their own skill and care with respect to its use and should obtain any expert advice they consider necessary. This material is made available on the understanding that neither the Institute nor the Commonwealth is thereby engaged in rendering professional or expert advice. The material may include views of third parties and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Institute or the Commonwealth. Links to other web sites are inserted for convenience and do not constitute endorsement of material at those sites, or any associated organisation, product or service. Accessibility The Institute is committed to making its research available to the whole community. Accessibility is one of the key goals of the website. The HTML pages on our site comply as far as possible with the Priority 2 checkpoints of the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). These standards are endorsed by Australia's Government Online initiative. As well as a wide variety of information about the Australian Institute of Criminology and its work, the site includes full text of all current Institute publications as PDF documents. The Institute's published output consists largely of reports containing significant numbers of data tables, combined with analytical text. Tabular information is particularly complex to convert into the more accessible HTML format. It also requires extensive additional markup to render it accessible by screen readers, which use a synthesised voice to read items on the screen aloud. We encourage anyone who experiences difficulties accessing information on our website to contact us. In these cases, arrangements will be made to provide the information in an alternative format.