Young people returning to sentenced youth justice supervision 2023–24

In Australia, the state and territory government departments responsible for youth justice provide youth justice supervision. Young people enter the system when investigated by the police for allegedly committing an offence. The youth justice department in each jurisdiction provides young people serving supervised sentences (see What is a supervised sentence?) with services designed to reduce their likelihood of returning to sentenced supervision, among other outcomes. Various offence-specific and therapeutic programs are provided to meet the needs of young people, such as programs aimed to reduce alcohol and drug use and to improve employment skills, as well as cognitive-based interventions.

For details on the programs provided by each state and territory, see Appendix D: State and territory youth justice systems, policies and programs 2023–24 (AIHW 2025).

The rate of return to sentenced supervision shows, in part, the performance of services that youth justice departments provide, although a range of other factors beyond the control of these departments will also influence returns. Variations in state-based legislation, policies and practices may affect comparability of data between states and territories.

About this report

This report presents data on returns to sentenced supervision using measures developed as part of a related Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) project – Using the Juvenile Justice National Minimum Data Set to measure juvenile recidivism (AIHW 2013, 2015):

• Key concepts.
• Returns to sentenced youth justice supervision while aged 10–17 describes the rate of return to sentenced supervision at any time while aged 10–17 for young people born between 1990–91 to 2005–06.
• Returns to sentenced youth justice supervision within 6 and 12 months describes the rate of return to sentenced supervision within 6 and 12 months for young people who were released in 2022–23, who were aged 16 and under when released.
• The Appendix provides further information on the data and methods used in this report.

Key concepts

The Youth Justice National Minimum Data Set (YJ NMDS) is a longitudinal person-based data set containing information on young people under youth justice supervision. Using it has several benefits. It enables:

• measuring a young person’s rate of return to sentenced supervision across all participating states and territories, and not just in the state or territory of the original sentence
• reporting of factors such as order types and demographics by rate of returns
• linking data with other relevant data collections for longer-term comparisons.

Due to the scope of the YJ NMDS, data presented in this report relate only to returns to youth justice sentenced supervision, not to recidivism (see Returned to sentenced supervision). Youth justice departments are primarily responsible for providing rehabilitative services to young people under sentenced supervision only; hence, measures of returns to sentenced supervision are likely to be more useful indicators of the effectiveness of these departmental services than more general measures of recidivism. It should be noted that a range of services may also be made available to young people who are not under sentenced supervision, such as supervised bail and early intervention programs.

Returned to sentenced supervision

This report measures the number of young people released from a supervised sentence who subsequently return – that is, young people who received an additional supervised sentence after the end of their index sentence. While an additional supervised sentence is likely due to reoffending, it is not a measure of reoffending (or recidivism). This is because not all offences lead to a supervised sentence.

Recidivism refers to repeated or habitual criminal behaviour. Measuring recidivism requires information on all criminal acts a person commits. It is typically measured using data on police arrests or court orders, though these measures are imperfect – for example, some people commit offences without being charged, so will not appear in either police arrest or court orders data; others will be charged with offences they have not committed, or for which they are found not guilty.

The YJ NMDS cannot provide an adequate measure of recidivism as it only contains data on supervised sentences, not offences. Young people who receive unsupervised sentences (such as good behaviour bonds and fines) are not included in the YJ NMDS.

For more detail on the differences between measuring recidivism and returns to sentenced supervision see Young people returning to sentenced youth justice supervision 2014–15 (AIHW 2016).

The population for this report is restricted to young people who have received a supervised sentence. This means that the results presented relate specifically to young people who have committed an offence or offences serious enough to result in a supervised sentence. The return rate is calculated from a subpopulation of young people who committed an additional offence serious enough to result in an additional supervised sentence.

It is also possible that some young people are returned to sentenced supervision due to a breach of a previous order, rather than a new offence. However, an analysis of index order end reason (the order from which a return is counted) showed that this is likely to account for a minority of return sentences; most index sentences ended because they were completed.

Birth and supervision cohorts

In most states and territories, young people are eligible for youth justice supervision only between the ages of 10 and 17 (as children under the age of 10 cannot be charged with a criminal offence). In 2023, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory increased their minimum age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12 years old. This means that young people aged 10 and 11 can no longer be held criminally liable for their actions in these jurisdictions and are not included in the YJ NMDS in 2023–24.

However, young people may be supervised by the youth justice system after they have turned 18 in some circumstances.

In the absence of suitable data on adult supervision, in this report, 2 types of analysis measure the rate of return to sentenced youth justice supervision for young people aged 10 (or the minimum age of criminal responsibility) to 17:

• Using a birth cohort: The birth cohort captures data in full for young people aged 10–17. As the YJ NMDS has data available from 2000–01, complete birth cohort data are available for young people born from 1990–91 to 2005–06 (16 complete birth cohorts). YJ NMDS data are available for analysis for:
  • Tasmania from 2006–07; 10 birth cohorts with complete data
  • the Australian Capital Territory from 2008–09; 8 birth cohorts with complete data
  • the Northern Territory from 2012–13; 3 birth cohorts with complete data.

This analysis allows returns to be measured over the entire period that a young person is eligible for youth justice.

• Using a supervision cohort: The supervision cohort includes young people who were supervised in the same period, whose age at the time of release from the index sentence (the sentence from which returns are counted) made them eligible to return to youth justice supervision in the measurement period. In the case of the YJ NMDS, this cohort includes young people who were aged 10–16 at the time of release, allowing returns to be measured for up to 12 months. This analysis measures the number of returns to sentenced supervision within a year for all those released in 2022–23.

Before February 2018, young people in Queensland who offended while aged 17 or older were dealt with in the adult criminal justice system; they were not eligible to return to sentenced youth justice supervision unless they offended when aged 16 or younger. In February 2018, Queensland legislation was enacted that made young people who offended when aged 17 eligible to be dealt with in the youth justice system. Due to this change in legislation, Queensland data from 2017–18 onwards may not be comparable with data for previous years.

These 2 types of cohort analysis – birth cohort and supervision cohort – are presented in Returns to sentenced youth justice supervision while aged 10–17 and Returns to sentenced youth justice supervision within 6 and 12 months, respectively.

Differences in the rates of return between the 2 types of cohort analysis are expected. In part, this is because the birth cohort analysis looks at returns after each young person’s first ever episode of sentenced supervision, while the supervision cohort analysis includes young people who had a prior episode of sentenced supervision. Young people who have had a prior episode of supervision are more likely to return to supervision.

Future analyses may explore the differences between the two groups further to gain a better understanding of the different experiences of youth justice.

Time to return

The time to return to sentenced supervision is the time between the completion date of the index sentence (the order from which a return is counted) and the start date of the return sentence.

As offence data are not available in the YJ NMDS, it is not possible to exclude return sentences that relate to an offence committed before the index sentence (see ‘pseudo-recidivism’ in the Glossary). The potential impact of this was assessed in Stage 1 of this project, using pilot data from 2 states (AIHW 2013). Although the data were limited, the analysis suggests that sentences relating to earlier offences did not have a substantial impact on person-based analyses of returns to sentenced supervision.