NCJ Number
239028
Date Published
February 2012
Length
24 pages
Annotation
This study re-examined whether conferences held under the New South Wales (NSW) Young Offenders Act 1997 were more effective than court in reducing the risk and seriousness of further offending among juvenile offenders.
Abstract
Results strongly suggest that the conference regime established under the NSW Young Offenders Act 1997 is no more effective than the NSW Children's Court in reducing the risk of juvenile re-offending, reducing the seriousness of juvenile re-offending, delaying the time to the next offense or reducing the number of new offenses committed by juveniles. After adjusting for other factors in the "intention-to-treat" analyses, no significant differences were found between conference and court participants in the proportion of re-offending, the seriousness of their re-offending, the time to the first proven re-offense or the number of proven re-offenses for both the matched and weighted analyses. The same pattern of non-significant results was obtained regardless of whether justice procedures offenses were included or excluded from the definition of re-offending. The results were much the same in the "as-treated" analyses, except that there was no difference between the completed conference outcome plan and court matched groups in the proportion of re-offending, the seriousness of their re-offending or the number of proven re-offenses, regardless of whether justice procedures offenses were included or excluded from the definition of re-offending. However, in the "propensity score matched" analyses, the time to the first proven re-offense was found to be significantly longer for the conference group than for the court group; results suggest that conferencing is no more effective than the Children's Court in delaying the time to the next offense. Data were collected from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) Reoffending Database (ROD). Tables, figures, notes, references, and appendixes