Analysis of Repeat Imprisonment Trends in Australia Using Prisoner Census Data from 1994 to 2007

• NCJ Number: 231825
• Author(s): Jessica Zhang; Andrew Webster
• Date Published: August 2010
• Length: 64 pages
• Corporate Author: Australian Bureau of Statistics
• Sale Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: Australia

Annotation

This study used Australia's longitudinal Prisoner Census dataset to identify factors associated with offenders' reimprisonment, to determine whether the rate of reimprisonment has changed over time, and to portray trends in the criminal career paths of offenders with multiple prison episodes.

Abstract

The study found that reimprisonment was strongly associated with being young, Indigenous, or having been previously imprisoned. To a lesser extent, reimprisonment was also associated with being male. The Northern Territory had a particularly high rate of reimprisonment, given the dominance of young and/or Indigenous offenders in its prison population. In all Australian jurisdictions except Queensland, prisoners released in recent years were more likely to be reimprisoned than prisoners released in the mid-1990s. Nearly 60 percent of prisoners released during the period July 1994-June 1997 had not been reimprisoned by June 30, 2007. Rates of reimprisonment and specialization (a high rate of reimprisonment for the same offense) differed significantly by original offense type. There was a high degree of specialization in illicit drug offenses, sexual assault, and traffic offenses; however, prisoners who were originally imprisoned for other than these aforementioned offenses did not tend to move into these types of offenses as the cause for reimprisonment. There was also a high level of specialization and reimprisonment for offenses involving injury, robbery, burglary, and theft. A high proportion of those reimprisoned also moved into these offense types for their second and subsequent imprisonments. Many were reimprisoned for violations of justice orders (e.g., breaking parole). This study was based on a longitudinal dataset constructed from 14 successive Prisoner Censuses between 1994 and 2007, so as to follow over time two cohorts of individuals "released" from prison (a proxy measure derived from the absence of a prisoner's record in a subsequent Prisoner Census). Extensive tables and figures, 6 references, and appended supplementary information and statistics