People who commit or allegedly commit a crime when aged 10–17 may be dealt with under the youth justice system. Each state and territory in Australia has its own youth justice legislation, policies and practices, but the general processes by which young people are charged, and the types of legal orders available to the courts, are similar. Some people aged 18 and over may also be supervised in the youth justice system. Depending on the jurisdiction, this may be because they were apprehended for a crime that was (allegedly) committed when they were 17 or younger, their existing supervision continues once they turn 18 (instead of being transferred to the adult correctional system), or a court determines that they should be detained in a youth justice facility due to their vulnerability or immaturity.
Young people may be supervised when they are unsentenced—that is, when they are awaiting the outcome of their court matter or sentencing—or they may be sentenced to supervision after being proven guilty in court. Both unsentenced and sentenced supervision can take place in the community or in a detention facility (see glossary for definitions).
Data on this page are taken from the AIHW’s Youth Justice National Minimum Data Set (AIHW 2020). Numbers include young people of all ages (including those aged 18 and over) unless otherwise specified. Population rates are only calculated for people aged 10–17.
On an average day in 2018–19, 5,694 people aged 10 and over were under youth justice supervision. Among those aged 10–17, this was a rate of 20 per 10,000, or 1 in every 489 in this age group. A total of 10,820 young people were supervised by youth justice at some time during the year (from 1 July 2018 to 30 June 2019).
More than 4 in 5 (84%) young people under supervision on an average day in 2018–19 were supervised in the community, and 17% were in detention (some were supervised in the community and detention on the same day).
Most (89%) young people under community-based supervision on an average day were serving a sentence, while most (63%) of those in detention were unsentenced.
For 10–17 year olds on an average day of youth justice supervision in 2018–19:
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians were 16 times as likely as non-Indigenous people to be under supervision—almost 15 times as likely to be under community-based supervision, and 22 times as likely to be in detention (see Indigenous community safety)
- males were 4 times as likely as females to be under supervision
- young people from Very remote areas were 9 times as likely as those from Major cities to be under supervision
- young people from the lowest socioeconomic areas were 5 times as likely as those from the highest socioeconomic areas to be under supervision.
Among the states and territories, rates of supervision for 10–17 year olds ranged from 11 per 10,000 on an average day in Victoria to 61 per 10,000 in the Northern Territory (Figure 1).