Evaluation of Home Detention in South Australia: Report 1

In February 2017, following the completion of a competitive tender process, DCS commissioned research to evaluate the impact of newly implemented changes to Home Detention in South Australia. The findings show that the reforms to court-ordered HD (COHD) and release-ordered HD (ROHD) had a demonstrable positive impact across multiple domains. In May 2020, DC commissioned the same team of researchers to conduct an independent evaluation of Home Detention, to provide a longitudinal assessment of the impact of legislative and program changes. This report presents findings for the program outcomes for a two-and-a-half year period from November 2018 (when the first evaluation project concluded) to June 2021

Classification of patterns of offending in developmental and life-course criminology, with special reference to persistence

Developmental and life-course criminology can be differentiated from other types of criminology by its focus on, and appreciation of, change over time in antisocial behaviour and offending, using longitudinal research. This approach emerged from a long history of longitudinal studies which culminated in the articulation of the ‘criminal careers’ perspective in the mid 1980s. Since then there have been numerous analyses and developmental and life-course theories which have attempted to explain and classify patterns of offending and antisocial behaviour over time. In this paper we consider various methods used to classify these behaviours, using the examination of persistent antisocial behaviour and offending as a case study. While sophisticated analytic techniques exist, we argue that in the case of identifying persistent offending, a focus on the duration of offending is the key consideration

Self-harm and suicidal ideation among young people is more often recorded by child protection than health services in an Australian population cohort

OBJECTIVE: We investigated patterns of service contact for self-harm and suicidal ideation recorded by a range of human service agencies - including health, police and child protection - with specific focus on overlap and sequences of contacts, age of first contact and demographic and intergenerational characteristics associated with different service responses to self-harm.METHODS: Participants were 91,597 adolescents for whom multi-agency linked data were available in a longitudinal study of a population cohort in New South Wales, Australia. Self-harm and suicide-related incidents from birth to 18 years of age were derived from emergency department, inpatient hospital admission, mental health ambulatory, child protection and police administrative records. Descriptive statistics and binomial logistic regression were used to examine patterns of service contacts.RESULTS: Child protection services recorded the largest proportion of youth with reported self-harm and suicidal ideation, in which the age of first contact for self-harm was younger relative to other incidents of self-harm recorded by other agencies. Nearly 40% of youth with a health service contact for self-harm also had contact with child protection and/or police services for self-harm. Girls were more likely to access health services for self-harm than boys, but not child protection or police services.CONCLUSION: Suicide prevention is not solely the responsibility of health services; police and child protection services also respond to a significant proportion of self-harm and suicide-related incidents. High rates of overlap among different services responding to self-harm suggest the need for cross-agency strategies to prevent suicide in young people.</p

Connection to the natural environment and well-being in middle childhood

Though the positive association between a connection to the natural environment and well-being is well established, few studies have examined this association in children, and none have explored whether this relationship remains when accounting for other factors that affect well-being, such as social supports, attention and empathic skills. The current study aims to address this gap. Data are drawn from the New South Wales Child Development Study (NSW-CDS), and comprise a representative sample of 26,848 children who completed a self-report survey of mental health and wellbeing when aged approximately 11 years. Multiple regression analysis indicated that, after adjusting for covariates (i.e., social supports, empathy, attention, socioeconomic status, and sex), connection to nature was positively, albeit weakly, associated with two indicators of well-being: self-satisfaction and prosocial behaviour. Social supports had the strongest relationship with self-satisfaction, while empathy had the strongest relationship with prosocial behaviour. Based on our findings, and that of previous research, we suggest that developing a connection to nature can slightly improve well-being, and may complement or augment other well-being and education-based programs. Future research should examine whether the relationship between connection to nature and well-being is influenced by proximity to greenspaces, experiences of nature, and age

Children’s contact with police as a victim, person of interest and witness in New South Wales, Australia

Contact with the police, as the first contact with the criminal justice system for young people and children, may signify individuals who are vulnerable to later adverse social and health outcomes. However, little is known about how often children have contact with police or for what reason. In this paper, we provide a demographic profile of the prevalence and reasons for police contact among a representative, longitudinal, population-based sample of 91,631 young people in New South Wales, Australia. By 13 years of age, almost one in six (15.6%) children had contact with police as a victim, person of interest and/or witness on at least one occasion. The most common reason for contact with police was in relation to an assault. There was considerable overlap among children who had been in contact with police on more than one occasion for different reasons, with those having police contact as a person of interest or witness being seven times more likely to have also been in contact with police as a victim in a separate incident, than children not known to police. We show that contact with the police is surprisingly common among children and suggest that early interventions for children in contact with police might prevent a range of adverse outcomes not limited to criminal offending.</p

Incidence of Early Police Contact Among Children With Emerging Mental Health Problems in Australia

Importance: In adulthood and adolescence, mental health vulnerability is known to be associated with risk of criminal justice system contact as both a perpetrator and survivor of crime, but whether this association is apparent early in child development is unknown. Prevention of poor outcomes, including repeated contact with the criminal justice system, relies on the identification of vulnerability early in life and at the start of such contact.Objective: To ascertain whether children with emotional or behavioral problems and general developmental vulnerabilities are at an increased risk of subsequent contact with police as a person of interest, a survivor of crime, or a witness.Design, Setting, and Participants: This cohort study used routinely collected data from the New South Wales Child Development Study in Australia. The cohort was composed of children who entered full-time schooling in New South Wales in 2009, had complete data for the emotional maturity domain of the Australian Early Development Census, and had no police contact before January 1, 2009. The children in the cohort were followed up until the age of 13 years. Data were analyzed from October 17, 2019, to May 13, 2020.Exposures: Emotional or behavioral problems and developmental risk profiles derived from the teacher-rated Australian Early Development Census.Main Outcomes and Measures: Incidence rates of police contact (as a person of interest, survivor of crime, or witness) were derived from the New South Wales Police Force Computerised Operational Policing System.Results: A total of 79 801 children (40 584 boys [50.9%]; 2009 mean [SD] age, 5.2 [0.37] years) were included. Children with teacher-identified emotional or behavioral problems at school entry had an incidence rate of police contact (for any reason) that was twice that of children without such problems (unadjusted hazard ratio [HR], 2.14; 95% CI, 1.94-2.37). Contact with police as a survivor of crime was most commonly recorded (7350 [9.2%]), but the strength of the association was greatest between emotional or behavioral problems and police contact as a person of interest (unadjusted HR, 4.75; 95% CI, 3.64-6.19). Incidence of police contact as a person of interest was high for children with a pervasive developmental risk profile (unadjusted HR, 13.80; 95% CI, 9.79-19.45).Conclusions and Relevance: This study found an association of emerging emotional or behavioral problems and developmental vulnerabilities with increased risk of police contact for any reason among young children, suggesting that this well-known association in adults and adolescents can be identified at an earlier developmental stage. These findings support primary and secondary interventions to prevent police contact early in life and to target the earliest contacts with the criminal justice and educational systems.</p

Levels of Involvement with Child Protection Services Associated with Early Adolescent Police Contact as a Victim and Person of Interest

The relationship between childhood maltreatment and subsequent offending/victimization is well established. However, the magnitude of this relationship for different levels of child protection services (CPS) involvement is poorly understood, due to measurement issues, lack of longitudinal data, and reliance on reports of substantiated maltreatment, which can underestimate the impact of maltreatment. This study examined associations between CPS involvement during childhood (ages 0 to <11 years) and police services contact (as a victim and/or a person of interest) for criminal incidents in early adolescence (11 to ~14 years), differentiated according to levels of CPS involvement (i.e., no risk of significant harm [non-ROSH], unsubstantiated ROSH, substantiated ROSH, and out-of-home care; each examined relative to no CPS contact). Data for 71,465 children were drawn from the New South Wales Child Development Study, an intergenerational, longitudinal investigation that uses administrative records from CPS and police alongside other health, justice, and education data. Multinomial regression analyses were conducted to determine associations between increasing levels of CPS involvement and police contact as a victim only, a person of interest only, and as both victim and person of interest while accounting for covariates (i.e., child's sex, Aboriginal, and/or Torres Strait Islander background, socioeconomic status, maternal age at child's birth, and parental offending history). Children exposed to any of the four levels of CPS involvement had higher odds of police contact, relative to children with no CPS involvement. Odds ratios were higher for contact with police as both a victim and a person of interest, compared to police contact as a victim or a person of interest only. These findings highlight that children with even unsubstantiated CPS reports (i.e., non-ROSH and unsubstantiated ROSH reports) are at heightened risk of police contact compared to children who are unknown to CPS, underlining the need to support all families in contact with CPS.</p

Early developmental vulnerabilities following exposure to domestic violence and abuse : Findings from an Australian population cohort record linkage study

Early life exposure to Domestic Violence and Abuse (DVA) is associated with poor psychosocial and cognitive development in childhood. However, most prior research uses mother-reported involvement in DVA as a proxy indicator of child exposure; studies using direct measures of child exposure to DVA are scarce, especially among representative population-based samples. We address this gap by using longitudinal, population-based data from an Australian record linkage study of children to examine the associations between early life exposure to DVA and early childhood developmental vulnerability. Exposure to DVA was measured using police contact records for children involved in a DVA incident either as a victim or witness. Developmental vulnerability at school entry was measured using the Australian Early Development Census, providing indices of five broad domains of function and person-centred classes of developmental risk (referred to as 'mild generalized risk', 'misconduct risk', and 'pervasive risk', each compared to a group showing 'no risk'). Children exposed to DVA showed significantly greater odds of developmental vulnerability on all five domains and were more likely to be members of the three developmental risk classes. Girls who were victims of DVA (OR = 1.65) had significantly poorer developmental outcomes than boys who were victims (OR = 1.26) within the domain of communication skills and general knowledge (d = 0.29 [SE = 0.16], p = .04). No other sex differences were found. These preliminary findings hold important implications for policy regarding the early intervention and implementation of support services for young children exposed to DVA.</p