Youth justice in Australia 2023–24

The Youth Justice National Minimum Data Set (YJ NMDS) contains information on all children and young people in Australia who were supervised by youth justice agencies in the community and in detention.

Data are extracted from the administrative systems of the state and territory departments responsible for youth justice in Australia.

The YJ NMDS 2023–24 includes data from March 2020 to June 2022, which coincides with the presence of COVID‑19 in Australia and related social restrictions. The full impact of COVID‑19 on youth justice supervision may be difficult to determine due to variability of the data and small numbers of young people under supervision on an average day. More research is required in order to better understand the impact of COVID‑19 and related social restrictions on youth justice supervision across Australia.

Data quality and coverage

Overall, the levels of missing data in the YJ NMDS are low. 5.3% of all young people in the YJ NMDS since 2000–01 have an unknown Indigenous status, and similar proportions of records in each of the order (5%) and detention (4%) files have unknown or missing information for the postcode, suburb and state of the young person's last known address. For all other variables in the YJ NMDS, the proportion of missing data is 1% or less.

Not all participating states and territories were able to provide YJ NMDS data in the current format for all years of the YJ NMDS (2000–01 to 2023–24).

States and territories

New South Wales

For New South Wales, data provided from 2019–20 onwards will differ from previous years after a review of order end reason classifications. Order end reasons affected include both:

• '1 – Completed' reported as 'successful completions'
• '88 – Other'.

Order type data submitted from 2018–19 onwards will differ from previous years after a review of the mapping of local to national order type classifications. Order types affected include both:

• '31–Community-based with and without additional mandated requirements' reported as 'probation and similar'
• '37–Other community sentence' reported as 'other'.

In New South Wales (NSW), responsibility for the Kariong Juvenile Justice Centre was transferred from the NSW Department of Juvenile Justice to the NSW Department of Corrective Services on 10 November 2004, and it was renamed the Kariong Juvenile Correctional Centre.

As the YJ NMDS includes only young people who are supervised by youth justice agencies in Australia, information about young people in custody in the Kariong Centre after 10 November 2004 is not included. In 2012–13 there were 28 young people in the Kariong Centre on an average day, and therefore they formed only a small proportion (around 8%) of young people in detention in New South Wales.

Kariong Juvenile Correctional Centre was closed in early 2015. During April and May 2015, 23 young people were transferred out of the Kariong Centre to another youth detention centre under the supervision of Juvenile Justice NSW. All young people under the age of 18 who were transferred out of the Kariong Centre, and who entered the supervision of Juvenile Justice NSW, entered the YJ NMDS data collection on the date they were transferred.

Victoria

For Victoria, data provided from 2018–19 onwards will differ from previous years after a review of order end reason classifications. Order end reasons affected include both:

• '1 – Completed' reported as 'successful completions'
• '88 – Other'.

Queensland

In Queensland, legislation to increase the youth justice age limit to 17 was passed in 2016, and enacted on 12 February 2018. Before then, the age limit in Queensland was 16, and young people aged 17 and older were treated as adults.

From February 2018, young people aged 17 have been transferred from the adult justice system into the youth justice system, which has, in part, led to an initial rise in the number of young people held in youth justice supervision in Queensland and nationally.

Western Australia

The 2023–24 reporting period is the eighth year to include YJ NMDS data from Western Australia since 2007–08.

For the 2015–16 and 2016–17 submissions the Western Australia data supply included only the sentenced detention period, where a young person was both sentenced and unsentenced at the same time. As a result, there may have been an undercount of young people on unsentenced detention orders in those YJ NMDS submissions.

From 2017–18 onwards, Western Australia was able to capture more accurate legal status changes, so unsentenced detention periods will appear to have increased. Western Australia also began backdating sentenced orders in the 2017–18 submission which led to variations in the number of sentenced orders captured within a reporting period.

South Australia

South Australian order type data reported from 2018–19 will vary from that reported in previous years due to a review of the mapping of local to national order type classifications. This affected most community order types to a small degree.

Australian Capital Territory

In 2021, the Australian Capital Territory implemented a new youth justice information system which improved data quality and availability. Police-referred pre-court detention and remand (court-referred detention) are now included as separate records from the 2020–21 YJ NMDS submission onwards.

A review of the mapping of local to national order type classifications resulted in changes to 2018–19 YJ NMDS data for the Australian Capital Territory. Suspended detention orders are now being reported where previously they were combined with probation or similar orders.

Northern Territory

The 2023–24 reporting period is the seventh year to include YJ NMDS data for the Northern Territory. Data before 2012–13 are not available in YJ NMDS format.

Due to the implementation of a new information system ahead of the 2022–23 YJ NMDS submission, data for the Northern Territory will not be comparable to Youth justice in Australia releases prior to 2022–23.

The following data were not available for the Northern Territory in 2023-24:

• all supervision (average day)
• community-based supervision (average day)
• orders
• completed supervision periods (all supervision and community-based supervision)
• average length of time spent under supervision during the year (all supervision and community-based supervision).

For Northern Territory YJ NMDS data, periods of sentenced detention have been backdated to take into account periods of unsentenced detention already served. As a result, there may be an over-count of young people in sentenced detention and a high proportion of young people reported as being in sentenced and unsentenced detention at the same time. The Northern Territory hopes to remedy this in future to align more closely to other jurisdictions.

Indigenous status

About 5.3% of all young people in the YJ NMDS since 2000–01 have an unknown Indigenous status. In 2023–24, 2.2% of all young people under supervision during the year had an unknown Indigenous status.

Among the states and territories, this ranged from less than 2.0% in Victoria, Queensland, and South Australia to 6.1% in the Australian Capital Territory. Western Australia had no unknown Indigenous status.