Early versus late contact with the youth justice system: opportunities for prevention and diversion

ABSTRACT

Children who have ‘early contact’ with youth justice (YJ) are a group of significant policy interest. Understanding circumstances which precede or co-occur with YJ contact can support the development of preventive investments and inform debates about systemic reform, such as ‘raise the age’. Using whole-of-population administrative data from the SA Better Evidence Better Outcomes Linked Data (BEBOLD) platform, we examine differences between children who have early (i.e. between the ages of 10 and 13 years) versus late (i.e. at age 14 or older) YJ contact, relative to the general population. Children born 1991–2022 were followed from birth to age 18 (N = 249,995). Compared to the late-contact group, children with early contact experienced more serious YJ contact (91% versus 59% experienced custody); were more disadvantaged at birth (e.g. 66% versus 45% born into jobless families); had more serious child protection contact by age 10 (26% versus 12% experienced out-of-home care); and experienced mental health-related hospitalisations from ages 12–18 (43% versus 34%). Relative to the general population, both groups were characterised by significant social and economic disadvantage, child protection contact and mental health challenges. The need for investment in early prevention to divert children from the justice system is clear.

KEYWORDS:

• child protection
• data linkage
• developmental criminology
• early-onset offending
• juvenile justice
• mental health
• youth justice

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Contribution statement

C. M., M.M., R.P., A.M. and P.D. conceived and designed the study. J.L., R.P., A.M. and C.M. were involved in the acquisition of data. P.H.R.S. and M.M. analysed the data, with support from C.M. and A.M. C.M. directed the investigation, supervised the findings of this work and drafted this manuscript. All authors were involved in the interpretation of the results. R.P., P.D., A.D. and J.L. provided critical revision of the manuscript. R.P. and J.L. are joint senior authors on this publication.

Data availability statement

No data are available. The data underlying this article were provided by several Australian State and Commonwealth government agencies under agreements with the researchers led by author J.L., SA-NT Datalink as the independent linkage authority and multiple ethics committees. Data are only able to be accessed by researchers who have entered into agreements with the Data Custodians and are approved users by the Human Research Ethics Committee.

Data can be accessed through an application and approval process administered by the independent data linkage authority, SA-NT Datalink.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was supported by funding from the Channel 7 Children’s Research Foundation (Grant 19700064); Catia Malvaso is supported by an Australian Research Council Early Career Researcher Award (DE200100679). Rhiannon Pilkington is supported by an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Clinical Trials and Cohort Studies grant (#1187489). Rhiannon Pilkington and Alicia Montgomerie were supported by an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Centre for Research Excellence awarded to John Lynch (#1099422). John Lynch was awarded a NHMRC Australia Fellowship (#570120).