No abstract

Our aim was to determine the overall rates of general and sexual re-offending of youth (i.e. aged under 18 at the time of offence) charged with sexual offences, ranging from indecent exposure to rape, over 6.5 years in South Australia and whose cases were finalised in court, by conference and by formal caution (N ¼ 365). Controlling for previous offending, we examined if re-offending varied by site of finalisation or by referral to Mary Street, a specialist treatment program. Follow-up times ranged from six to 84 months. We applied a parametric form of survival analysis by fitting the Weibull 'mixture model' to the Kaplan-Meier cumulative distribution of failure times (time to re-offend). Covariates, such as prior offending or referral to Mary Street, were introduced to test for differences in survival rates, immune proportions or both between groups. By the cut-off date, 54% of youth had been charged with new nonsexual offences but only 9% with new sexual offences. Court youth had a higher rate of re-offending than conference youth, but these differences were largely explained by prior offending. For the subgroup with no previous offending, however, a significantly slower rate of re-offending was observed for conference youth and for those who were referred to Mary Street. We were able to control for the main effect of prior offending, but complex interactions between co-variates such as offence types, early admissions to offending and legal and therapeutic responses could not be disentangled in our small sample, and we could not explore factors linked specifically to sexual re-offending. Future research should examine

No abstract

Proponents of cannabis law reform argue that many people who are convicted for minor cannabis offences have no prior criminal conviction and are otherwise law-abiding citizens. This study of criminal justice system data in a strict prohibition jurisdiction (Western Australia) found that over 10% of all charges and 85% of all drug charges were for cannabis. Approximately 90% of these were for minor offences. Over 40% of those charged with cannabis possession/use as their most serious offence had never been arrested for any prior offence. Almost half of those first arrested for cannabis possession/use had not been arrested up to 10 years later. Younger first-time arrested cannabis users were more likely to be re-arrested than older offenders. Almost all adult cannabis offenders who went to court were convicted and fined. Nearly 95% of those imprisoned for possession/use of cannabis were gaoled for fine default. The findings accord with earlier research showing that the vast majority of these offenders are, in all respects apart from their cannabis use, a non-criminal section of the community.