Youth justice in Australia 2023–24

This report uses a 5-group ranking to measure the socioeconomic area in which a young person lives. Area 1 represents the population living in the lowest socioeconomic areas, with the greatest level of disadvantage (that is, 20% of the population that live in the lowest socioeconomic areas). Area 5 represents the population living in highest socioeconomic areas with the lowest level of disadvantage, or the 20% of the population that live in the highest socioeconomic areas. The postcode of a young person’s last known address is used to determine their socioeconomic area.

A socioeconomic area could be determined for about 96% of young people in the data set – for more information, see the:

• Glossary
• Appendix A1: data quality
• Appendix A2: technical information.

Young people under youth justice supervision in 2023–24 most commonly lived in lower socioeconomic areas before entering supervision. Nearly 2 in 5 young people (39%) under supervision on an average day were from the lowest socioeconomic area (area 1), compared with only 6.0% from the highest socioeconomic areas (area 5) (Table S23a).

On an average day in 2023–24, 24 per 10,000 young people aged 10–17 from the lowest socioeconomic areas were under supervision compared with 4.0 per 10,000 from the highest socioeconomic areas (Figure 4.3).

This means that young people from the lowest socioeconomic areas were about 6 times as likely to be under supervision as those from the highest socioeconomic areas. The results were similar across supervision types (community-based supervision and detention).

First Nations young people (44%) were more likely than their non-Indigenous counterparts (33%) to have lived in the lowest socioeconomic areas before entering supervision (Table S23a). This reflects the geographical distribution of the First Nations population in Australia.

Figure 4.3: Young people aged 10–17 under supervision on an average day, by socioeconomic area of usual residence and supervision type, Australia, 2023–24

Notes

1. Socioeconomic position could not be determined for 4.0% of young people under youth justice supervision.
2. Age on an average day is calculated based on the age a young person is each day that they are under supervision. If a young person changes age during a period of supervision, the average daily number under supervision will reflect this. Average daily data broken down by age will not be comparable with data in Youth justice in Australia releases before 2019–20.
3. The number and rate of young people on an average day not available for the Northern Territory in 2023–24 for all supervision and community-based supervision.
4. Rates for the Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory in 2023–24 are for young people aged 12–17 due to the increase to the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12 in those jurisdictions.

Source: tables S24c, S59c and S99c.