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Youth Facts and Stats

Drug use and crime amont police detainees, 2005

The 2005 annual report for the Drug Use Monitoring in Australia program (DUMA) shows:

  • The mean age of male offenders' first and regular use of alcohol and cannabis was 14 and 16 years respectively.
  • The mean age of first arrest was 18 for regular useers of alcohol and 16 for regular users of cannabis.
  • Other drugs, such as cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines, have older ages of first and regular use:
    • 19,19 and 18 years respectively for first use, and
    • 21, 20 and 21 for regular use.
  • The mean age of first arrest was the same or lower than those for alcohol and cannabis (16, 15 and 16 years respectively).

These results suggests that users of these particular drugs were likely to have been arrested for criminal activities before they self-reported regular use of these drugs.


Age of drug use and of arrest for male offenders, 2005


Further reading: Mouzos J, Smith L & Hind N 2006. Drug Use Monitoring in Australia: 2005 annual report on drug use among police detainees. Research and public policy series no. 70. Canberra : Australian Institute of Criminology [viewed 29/11/2006].


Further information:

* Full research report: Drug Use Monitoring in Australia
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/rpp/70/

* Summary report: Drug use among police detainees, 2005
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/tandi2/tandi319.html

* Topic: Illicit drugs and alcohol
http://www.aic.gov.au/research/drugs/

* Topic: Crime statistics
http://www.aic.gov.au/stats/crime/


Source: Australian Institute of Criminology, Crime facts info No. 132: Drug use and crime, 26 September 2006 [viewed 29/11/2006].

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'Australian Crime: Facts and Figures 2005'

‘Australian Crime: Facts and Figures 2005’ was released by the Australian Institute of Criminology in March 2006. Criminal justice data reported in ‘Facts and Figures’ come from a variety of sources: administrative, such as criminal justice agency records and incident records kept by police, and surveys, such as the International Crime Victimisation Survey carried out in 2004. Statistics from the AIC as well as data holdings at the Australian Bureau of Statistics and other government agencies are used in the report, which provides a national picture of crime and justice throughout Australia for the period 1996 to 2004:

Overall:

  • There has been a reduction in the number of almost all the major crimes recorded at a national level in Australia.
  • The crimes of homicide, robbery, burglary, motor vehicle theft and other theft have been in decline over the past three years.
  • Homicide rate per 100,000 person:
    • 1.9 in 1996
    • At its highest in 1999, at 2.0.
    • 1.5 in 2004
  • Robbery rate per 100,000 persons:
    • 137 in 2001 (the highest recorded since 1996).
    • Since 2001 has declined by 40%, to 82 per 100,000 in 2004.
  • Motor Vehicle theft declined by 35% between 1996 and 2004:
    • From 671 to 437 per 100,000 population.
    • In 2004 there were 87,916 recorded victims of motor vehicle theft.
  • Based on the Drug Use Monitoring in Australia program, between 1999 and 2004: The percentage of police detainees testing positive to any drug or to cannabis has remained steady.
    • Heroin use decreased markedly between 2000 and 2001 and has remained at this lower level.
    • Methylamphetamine use increased until 2001 and has since levelled off.
  • From 1999-2000 to 2003-2004, there has been a decline in the total number of alleged offenders, but the majority continue to be male and aged between 15 and 19 years of age.
  • Between 1984 and 2004, the overall imprisonment rate increased from 88 to 158 per 100,000 adult population. The overall incarceration rate for juveniles declined 60%: from 65 to 26 per 100,000 between 1981 and 2004.

Download full report [viewed 29/11/2006].

Source:
The Australian Institute of Criminology, Australian Crime: Facts & Figures 2005, media release [viewed 29/11/2006].

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Juvenile justice in Australia 2000–01 to 2003–04

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) has released a new report, Juvenile justice in Australia 2000–01 to 2003–04. This report, the first of its kind, 'is based on the Juvenile Justice national minimum data set (NMDS), a joint project between the Australasian Juvenile Justice Administrators (AJJA) and the AIHW, and is designed to provide nationally comparable information on the juvenile justice system. It examines periods of time young people across Australia spent in detention and under community-based supervision and how those periods were managed.'

The report found that, in 2003–04:

  • 12,992 young people were under juvenile justice supervision in Australia, 83% of whom were males.
  • Only 9% of juvenile justice supervision periods contained 'episodes of sentenced detention'. The majority of supervision periods were community-based (probation, recognisance and community service orders).
  • 67% of young people under juvenile justice supervision were aged 16 years or older.
  • Less than 8% of young people under juvenile justice supervision were aged 13 years or younger.
  • Around 30% of young people under juvenile justice supervision during this period were of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin.
  • Approximately 34 in every 1,000 Indigenous youth aged 10–17 years were under juvenile justice supervision in this period, compared with approximately three in every 1,000 non-Indigenous youth of the same age group.

Source: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare media release, New juvenile justice report provides common resource for states and territories, [viewed 28/11/06].
Download report [viewed 29/11/2006 AIHW web site].

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The age of criminal responsibility

'Since the publication of The age of criminal responsibility (Urbas 2000), some jurisdictions have revised their legislation, confirming a trend over the last 20 years to uniformity in age limits for criminal responsibility. In the Australian Capital Territory, the Criminal Code 2002 Div 2.3.1 now deals with the criminal responsibility of children. From 1 July 2005 in Victoria, the age jurisdiction of the criminal division of the Children's Court has increased from 17 to 18 years. In Queensland, for the purposes of the Juvenile Justice Act 1992 a child is a person who has not turned 17 years.

Doli incapax means a presumption that a child is "incapable of crime" under legislation or common law. Recent Australian reviews (Bradley 2003 and Crofts 2003) have discussed amending the doli incapax presumption, including reversing the onus of proof and changing its application to ages twelve and under.'

For 'Ages of criminal responsibility in Australian jurisdictions', log on to Australian Institute of Criminology, Crime Facts Info No. 106: [viewed 29/11/2006].

References:
Bradley L 2003. 'The age of criminal responsibility revisited'. Deakin law review 4. Web version available at http://www.austlii.edu.au/
Crofts T 2003. 'Doli incapax: why children deserve its protection'. E-law 10(3): 1-–15. Web version available at http://www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/issues/v10n3/crofts103.html
Urbas G 2000. 'The age of criminal responsibility'. Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no 181. Web version available at http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/tandi/tandi181.html

Source: Australian Institute of Criminology, Crime Facts Info No. 106.

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Fake ID project, South Australia, 2003

The Fake ID project was launched in August 2003. The investigation, which was conducted by the Office of Crime Statistics to discover the prevalence of false IDs, found that most students were not being asked for identification when entering licensed venues.
The survey of 472 students aged 16 and 17, from three public schools and one private school in the southern suburbs of Adelaide, found:

  • 53% of 17-year-olds and 45% of 16-year-olds had attended a licensed venue.
  • Almost a quarter said they had attended a licensed venue in the last week.
  • 10% of students were refused entry to a licensed venue on their most recent attempt.
  • 25% of teenagers who tried to gain entry were carrying false IDs.
  • More than half of the teenagers who frequented venues while under-age had tried to buy alcohol, with almost 90% successful.
  • Almost 80% of students said they entered licensed venues to be with friends, 50% to consume alcohol, 41% to dance and 30% to see live music.

Source: Adelaide Advertiser, 25/6/2005, p.5.
To download the full report, Evaluation of the Fake ID project, log on to Office of Crime Statistics [viewed 29/11/2006].

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Crime Research, 2000

The 2000 International Crime Victims Survey (ICVS) used a telephone survey to assess the prevalence and incidence of crime in industrialised countries. Surveys are considered a better way to gauge crime victimisation because many victims do not make reports to police, and the statistics of those who do, vary, because jurisdictions apply different rules and definitions.

Percentage of those who told researchers they had been victimised one or more times in 1999:
Australia: 30%
England and Wales: 26%
US: 21%
Japan: 15%

Property crimes such as breaking and entering and vehicle theft traditionally accounted for much of Australian crime, but that is changing:
145,420 violent crimes in 1996, compared to
198,722 in 2002 (80% were assaults).

According to criminologists, youth unemployment, alcohol and the active mobile Australian lifestyle could be contributing factors to the violence.

The ICVS is conducted by Leiden University in Holland.

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Cautions not court

In some circumstances, to divert young people from court, police can give cautions as an alternative. In all jurisdictions there is a mix of informal and formal cautioning.

Summary of police cautioning by state and territory:

State Legislation Informal
caution		 Formal
caution		 Can require
undertakings
NSW Young Offenders
Act 1997		 Yes,
'Warning'		 Yes Apology only
Queensland Juvenile justice
Act 1992		 Yes Yes No
SA Young Offenders
Act 1993		 Yes Yes Yes
Tasmania Youth Justice Act
1997		 Yes
(not in Act)		 Yes
'Informal
Caution'		 Yes
Victoria None. Victoria
Police Operating
Procedures Manual		 Yes Yes No
WA Young Offenders
Act 1994		 Yes Yes No
ACT Children & Young
People Act 1999		 No Yes No
NT Police Administration Act Yes Yes Yes

In Queensland, roughly three times as many young people are cautioned as appear in court, with the ratio growing from 3:1 to 3.2:1 since 1997. (In the last year for which data are available, 2000, there were 14,529 cautions in Queensland).

In Victoria, the number of cautions has been consistently around 8300 a year, which represents around 30% of apprehensions. While Victoria has had more cautions than children's court appearances for the last decade, the difference is not large, with court appearances totalling between 71% (in 1995) and 87% (in 1999) of the number of cautions. For the past five years, cautions have remained at around 43% of all recorded police apprehensions.

In Western Australia since 1991 when cautioning was introduced in legislation, there has been a steady increase in the numbers of young people cautioned, while the numbers in court declined steadily until stabilising in the late 1990s. The latest figures (2000) for Western Australia show 11,267 people cautioned (compared with 1,756 in 1991) and 3,057 young people convicted in the children's court (compared with 7,554 in 1991).

While the number of cautions given by New South Wales police has increased steadily from 5,615 in 1998 to 7,626 in 2000, nearly twice as many young people appeared in court (13,882) as were cautioned in 2000.

In South Australia, cautions have accounted for roughly one-third of the cases of young people apprehended, but the numbers being sent to court have been slightly greater than for those cautioned for four of the past five years. There were 2,486 cautions in 2001.

In Tasmania, in the Eastern district in 2000–01, 36% of young people were sent to court whereas only 14% received a caution.

Source: Polk, K, Adler, C, Muller, D, & Rechtman, K 2003, Early intervention: Diversion and youth conferencing – A national profile and review of current approaches to diverting juveniles from the criminal justice system, Australian Government Attorney-General's Department, Canberra [viewed 29/11/2006].

For other facts and stats, please choose from one of the subcategories under 'Crime and justice' at left.

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