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Juvenile Detention Population in Australia 2011

NCJ Number
238416
Date Published
2011
Length
127 pages
Annotation
This report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare presents data on the juvenile detention population in Australia for the year 2011.
Abstract
Highlights from this report on the juvenile detention population in Australia in 2011 include the following: by the end of June 2011, there were an average of 1,055 young people in detention each night throughout Australia, with 36 percent of those adolescents being detained in New South Wales; between 43 and 68 percent of detainees in most States and Terroritories were unsentenced. In addition, the findings show that the rates of detained adolescents and the rates for sentenced and unsentenced detentions has remained relatively stable since the end of June 2007; the highest rates of detention for the 4-year period 2007-2011 were in the Northern Territory (0.75-1.78 per 1,000), while the lowest rates were found in Victoria (0.10- 0.16 per 1,000); and Indigenous adolescents were 20 times a likely to be in unsentenced detention and 26 times as likely to be in sentenced detention as a non-Indigenous adolescent, with Western Australia having the highest rates of over-representation. This report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) presents data on the juvenile detention population in Australia for the year 2011. The juvenile detention population includes adolescents between the ages of 10 and 17 who have been alleged to committing an offense or have been found guilty of committing an offense. The report was compiled using data obtained primarily from AIHW's Juvenile Justice National Minimum Data Set. Main sections of the report include definition of a young person, types of detention, data and methods, recent trends in detention, recent trends in unsentenced detention, recent trends in sentenced detention, and State and Territory trends. Figures, appendix, tables, references, and a list of related publications