Comparison of Official Warnings and Court Appearances for Young Offenders

• NCJ Number: 80358
• Journal: Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology Volume: 14 Issue: 3 Dated: (September 1981) Pages: 165-169
• Author(s): D Challinger
• Date Published: 1981
• Length: 5 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Program/Project Evaluation
• Language: English
• Country: Australia

Annotation

Findings are presented from an Australian study that compared the recidivism rates of young offenders given an official police warning and those brought before the children's court.

Abstract

In January 1959, the Australian State of Victoria introduced a juvenile warning procedure. This provided that a police officer encountering a juvenile offender should be given the discretion to establish the underlying causes of the offense, determine whether this was a first offense, and then refer the youth for an official warning if a court proceeding was deemed to be unwarranted and possibly damaging. The official warning consists of a lecture to the youth by a designated officer in the presence of the youth's parents. Some followup after the lecture is encouraged. In order to investigate the relative effect of the police warning and court processing, 87 matched pairs of first offenders were selected from 6,108 processed in 1972. One of the pair had been warned, and the other had appeared before the children's court. Pairs were males matched in age, offense (theft), area of residence, attendance at same type of school, educational achievement, and truancy (paired by truancy or absence of it). Recidivism rates were examined for each group at six 1-year intervals after each original offense. Recidivism involved being found guilty in court of a further offense or receiving another official warning from police. After 4 years, about half of the total sample had committed another offense, with no significant difference between the recidivism rates of the two groups. The number of new offenses was also about the same for the two groups. The study concludes that the lower cost of the warning procedure, compared to court proceedings, makes the warning process more cost-effective and therefore worthy of continued use. Tabular data and seven references are provided.