Young people returning to sentenced youth justice supervision 2023–24

First Nations young people typically enter youth justice at younger ages than non-Indigenous young people (AIHW 2025). As noted earlier in this section, the younger a person was at the start of their first supervised sentence, the more likely they were to return to sentenced supervision at some time before the age of 18 (Figure 1.2). So, it would be expected that First Nations young people are more likely to return to youth justice supervision than non-Indigenous young people.

Of all young people who received a supervised sentence, just under 2 in 5 (38% or 19,466) were First Nations people. The vast majority (96% or 18,701) of these First Nations young people received a first supervised sentence of community-based supervision, just over half of whom (55%) receiving another supervised sentence. Of the 765 First Nations young people with a first supervised sentence of detention, about three-fifths (62%) had returned to sentenced supervision before the age of 18 (Figure 1.4).

Figure 1.4: First Nations young people with a supervised sentence from 2000–01 to 2023–24, by type of first supervised sentence

Notes:

1. Data relate to young people aged 10–17 who were supervised from 2000–01 to 2023–24.
2. Northern Territory data was not available for young people who had a sentence start in 2023–24.

Source: Supplementary table S1.

Sex

Among First Nations young people with a first supervised sentence of community-based supervision, 14,012 were male and 4,678 were female; males were 1.3 times as likely as females to receive another supervised sentence before the age of 18 (59% compared with 44%) (Figure 1.5).

Similarly, of the 668 First Nations male and 96 First Nations female young people who had a first supervised sentence of detention, a slightly higher proportion of males than females (62% compared with 59%) received another supervised sentence before the age of 18.