Juvenile Justice NMDS 2007

There are three collections within the JJ NMDS. The first collection is the client collection which lists all clients active in the juvenile justice system for the collection year and contains all relevant client characteristic variables. All episodes in the collection year for these clients are reported in the second episode-related collection. It contains unit-record data summarising each episode and clients may have multiple episodes within the collection year. Lastly, the centre collection provides some details on the detention centres administered by State and Territory juvenile justice departments within the scope of the JJ NMDS.

Juvenile justice clients

The JJ NMDS is designed to capture information on all young people involved in the juvenile justice systems throughout Australia. The ages of young people in the juvenile justice systems in Australia differ between jurisdictions. To allow for these variations, a client for the purposes of inclusion in the JJ NMDS is:

A person who is under the supervision or case management of a juvenile justice department as a result of:

• having committed or allegedly committed an offence between the ages of 10 years and 17 years;
  OR
• having committed or allegedly committed an offence at age greater than 17 years, and who is treated as a juvenile due to his or her vulnerability or immaturity.

Supervision type

In general, the types of juvenile justice agency supervision in the scope of the JJ NMDS collection are those entailing direct JJ agency involvement, such as formal supervision at pre-court, pre-sentence, sentence, and parole stages. Both community and custodial supervision types are included. Note that some types of intervention that may be administered by JJ agencies are not in the scope of the JJ NMDS. These include some diversionary schemes, conferences, warning, fines, and good behaviour bonds

Service episodes

In the JJ NMDS, a service episode is defined as a period of time during which a juvenile justice client is under the supervision of, or is case managed by, a State or Territory juvenile justice department, as a result of having committed or allegedly committed an offence, and where there is no change in the type of supervision provided or the specific juvenile justice agency responsible.

Supervision periods

Service episodes also contribute to the reporting on supervision periods. Supervision periods are a conceptual unit of analysis, derived from episode data, rather than being data elements specifically collected. The AIHW derives supervision periods by ordering episodes by entry date. A new supervision period is applied where the period of time between the exit date of one episode and the entry date of the following episode is greater than or equal to two days. A supervision period provides broad level information on contacts between young people and juvenile justice supervision, and episodes provide the detail regarding the length and type of that contact. One supervision period may contain several JJ episodes as the client moves through the system e.g. from remand to sentencing, and may contain more than one sentencing episode where continuous supervision is maintained.

A new supervision period begins when:

A client enters the JJ system for the first time; the difference between the entry date and the exit date of the previous episode is >=2 days.

The supervision period ends on the episode end date when there are no more episodes or the entry date of the next episode is two or more days after the exit date. Where a client is on two or more orders at a particular time in a jurisdiction, the supervision period will continue until all current orders are completed or otherwise finished. A new supervision period begins when the client is next under JJ Department supervision. Thus there will be a gap in time between supervision periods, whilst the client is in the community and not subject to any JJ Department supervision.

Juvenile justice departments

The relevant juvenile justice departments whose clients are included in the JJ NMDS as at August 2007 are:

• Department of Juvenile Justice, New South Wales
• Department of Human Services, Victoria
• Department of Communities, Queensland
• Department of Corrective Services, Western Australia
• Department for Families and Communities, South Australia
• Department of Health and Human Services, Tasmania
• Office for Children, Youth and Family Support, Australian Capital Territory
• Department of Justice, Northern Territory

In addition, other agencies have been included in the JJ NMDS where they supervise or case manage clients who are within the scope of the JJ NMDS, but are not administered by the above mentioned departments. These may include agencies such as police watch houses, for example.