Profile of YDC Program Participants

The data underlying the analysis in this section come mainly from data supplied by the Department of Juvenile Justice. The information is incomplete and there appear to be a small number of missing cases.³ These, however, would be unlikely to alter the overall profile substantially.

Age

The ages of all referrals to the program at the time of initial assessment ranged from 13 to 19, with a mean of 16.5 years. Only eight were aged under 15 and only three were over 18. The mean age of young people who actually participated in the program was slightly older, at 16.6 years, and ranged from 14 to 19. Thus the target ages for the program were maintained during the pilot period, given that the magistrate has some discretion in individual cases to allow participation by young people outside the 14-18 years age bracket.

Ethnicity and cultural background

There are some discrepancies between different data sources in the proportion of referrals and participants that identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander (hereafter ATSI), but this group appears to have made up between 23 per cent and one-third of all referrals. According to the DJJ database, which provides the lower-bound estimate for ATSI referrals, 46 per cent were of non-Indigenous Australian or other English-speaking country descent, just over 11 per cent were from Southeast Asia, 10 per cent from Pacific Islander backgrounds, including New Zealand Maori, and the rest were mainly from a variety of Middle-eastern or African backgrounds.

Around 42 per cent of Indigenous young people referred to the program were accepted, compared with around 48 per cent of all referrals. Given the discrepancies between data sources it is not possible to be certain whether the apparently lower level of entry into the program by Indigenous young people is significant.

3 This data set includes 144 cases with dates of referral within the 24-month pilot period. Allowing for the fact that these are unique cases and not duplicated where re-referral has taken place, this represents 154 of the 164 referrals recorded by the YDC Registry for this period.

Nearly 25 per cent of program participants were born overseas, mainly in New Zealand or various Pacific islands, or in Southeast Asian countries. Around 16 per cent nominated a language other than English as their preferred one, mainly Samoan, Khmer and Vietnamese, together with Tongan, Laotian and Turkish. The capacity of the program to meet the needs of people from different backgrounds is discussed later in the report.

Sex

We saw above that over the pilot period 13 young women (34 per cent of referrals) were accepted onto the program, a noticeably lower proportion than for young men. A slightly higher proportion of female than male referrals were Indigenous and there were a few from Southeast Asian or Pacific Islander backgrounds. Of those who were accepted, five were recorded as Indigenous (38 per cent).

The program implementation reviews found that young women presented particular problems in the initial period of operation. JART members reported that while the number of young women entering the program was small, they still presented a considerable challenge. By this stage in the juvenile justice system young women are likely on average to have had more involvement in drugs and offending than young men, and often have histories of sexual abuse and other risk behaviour in terms of sexual and reproductive health. Service delivery staff reported finding young women extremely difficult to engage and to contain with the program. Accommodation and some treatment options are more limited for young women than for young men (especially for Indigenous young women), and a number of young women had repeatedly absconded from accommodation and residential treatment services. Some had been on the run for several weeks with no contact until their arrest.

These difficulties are not restricted to the YDC. The Adult Drug Court has experienced similar difficulties in relation to the women on its program. However, the wider issue of the focus on young people with the most challenging needs, especially young women, may need to be addressed in any possible expansion of the program in the future. The Department of Juvenile Justice has been developing an action plan to enhance its capacity to address young women’s issues.

Drug use

Throughout the pilot period the main problem drug in use by both overall referrals and actual participants was heroin, followed by cannabis, alcohol and amphetamines.

The DJJ database records heroin as the principal drug of use for 54 per cent of all referrals during the pilot period, followed by amphetamines (15 per cent), cannabis (14 per cent) and alcohol (12 per cent). It should be noted, however, that where there is multiple drug use - but not to the particular level defined for poly drug use in the National Minimum Data Set - heroin is recorded as the principal drug because of the known at-risk behaviours associated with its use.

Amongst those accepted onto the program, heroin featured more strongly as the principal drug of use (59 per cent), with amphetamines following at nearly 19 per cent. Alcohol was identified as the principal drug by only six per cent. Otherwise participants were broadly similar to all those referred. In terms of the second problem drug of use, where this was recorded, cannabis was the most frequent, followed by alcohol and cocaine, both for all referrals and for those accepted on to the program.

The key difference between young women and young men was that a substantially higher proportion of the former, both referrals and participants, had heroin recorded as their principal drug of use. Amongst referrals as a whole, this applied to 80 per cent of young women, compared with 47 per cent of young men. Amongst those who were accepted onto the program, heroin was the main drug of use for more than 90 per cent of young women compared with just over half of young men.

The method of application of particular drugs is also significant. The DJJ data set records 50 per cent of all referrals injecting their main drug of use, 24 per cent inhaling it and 13 per cent ingesting it. For those accepted onto the program the rate of injection was higher, at 54 per cent. In line with the higher levels of heroin use by young women, injection rates for female participants were 70 per cent for all referrals and just over two-thirds for those accepted onto the program. Participant interviews suggested that the young women tended to have started both taking and injecting heroin at an earlier age than the young men. It needs to be emphasised again that the number of female participants was small, but it seems that young women coming to the attention of the YDC may be particularly at risk of the health and other problems associated with injecting heroin.

The DJJ database also records the scores of participants and referrals on assessment tests for severity of dependence (Sutherland et al., 1986) and readiness to change (adapted from Rollnick et al., 1992). These data are incompletely recorded, but suggest that a majority of all referrals were assessed as ‘severe’. A majority were also assessed at being at the ‘contemplation’ stage of readiness to change. Amongst those accepted on to the program these figures were higher, with 80 per cent classed as severely dependent and 79 per cent as at the ‘contemplation’ state of readiness to change.

A number of stakeholders involved in the policy and planning process commented that while it was always assumed that the main target group for the YDC was to be the

‘hard end’ of juvenile justice clients, they expected there to be a greater spectrum of needs and were surprised that the clientele did not include more participants with lower levels of drug use and welfare needs. There was a view that while the kinds of young people coming into contact with the courts have not changed substantially, their pattern of drug use is noticeably more frequent and of higher intensity. The age of initiation into injecting drug use also seems to be getting lower, as other research has suggested (Johnson, 2001).

There was strong support amongst stakeholders for the program persisting with this particular group of young offenders. Reducing offending behaviour and drug use amongst this group would represent a good measure of the success of an intensive intervention model such as the YDC program.

Offending histories

Since one of the main eligibility criteria for entry to the YDC program is likelihood of facing a control order, it is not surprising that the young people referred to the program came to the Court with a large number of charges against them. Data on previous offences come from the Children’s Court Information System (hereafter CCIS), to which the evaluators have no direct access. The data presented below are derived from the YDC Statistical Monitoring Reports (Department of Juvenile Justice

2002) and are based on CCIS searches for the previous 10 years. This database does not include outcomes from District and Supreme Courts (and thus may underestimate the average length of custodial sentences) and only contains information for the most serious outcomes. This means that for each group of charges for which a young person appears in court, only one - that relating to the most serious offence and outcome - is recorded.

Full data are not available for the first year of the pilot, but Table 3.3 shows the recorded offences accruing to YDC referrals and participants in the 12-month period from 1 July 2001 to 30 June 2002, categorised by main offence type. This shows that the group towards which the YDC program is targeted were substantial offenders, having accumulated a total of 692 different finalised court outcomes. Excluding the offences accrued by those still awaiting assessment at the end of June 2002, the program participants had 63 per cent of offences, while making up less than 40 per cent of all referrals. This indicates that selection into the program is weighted towards higher-level offenders.

Table 3.3: YDC referrals’ and participants’ previous offences (July 2001 to June 2002)

Offence type

YDC participants

YDC non-participants

Awaiting assessment

All referrals

% of all offences

Property

crimes 209 131 25 365 52.8

Crimes against

the person 103 71 12 186 26.9

Drug crimes 28 6 2 36 5.2

Traffic

offences 17 7 - 24 3.5

Other 39 28 3 70 10.1

Not recorded 9 2 11 1.6

Total 405 243 44 692 100

Total % of

offences 58.5 35.1 6.4 100

The young people referred during this year had also previously served a total of 87 custodial sentences between then, with an average length of sentence of seven months. Forty-eight (55 per cent) of these sentences were served by YDC program participants. The young women referred were recorded as accumulating 19 per cent of the total of offences between them, while making up 17 per cent of all referrals in that year.

The most common charges related to property offences, mainly theft of some kind, followed by offences against the person. It is noticeable that offences involving possession or sale of drugs made up only a small proportion of these main charges.

Living arrangements before entering the YDC program

The YDC statistical monitoring reports record the living arrangements of participants before they entered the program. In the first year of the pilot period two-thirds were living with their parent/s and this fell to 58 per cent in the second year. The rest were living in a variety of situations, including alone, with friends or other relatives, or with a partner.

Employment status

Virtually all the participants were recorded as unemployed when assessed. Two were in work (in one case sex work) and three were studying at the time of entry to the program.