Youth sex offending, recidivism and restorative justice: Comparing court and conference cases

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

Researching ‘Under the Radar’ practices: Exploring restorative practices in sexual violence cases

“…While several respondents identified their primary aim as the prevention of recidivism others defined outcomes primarily in terms of victims' well-being or referenced the aims outlined by the victim and offender in advance of the RJ process. The effectiveness of RJ interventions in relation to other crimes has been measured in some studies by reference to recidivism rates (Daly, 2006;Stulberg, 2011;Daly et al, 2013) but our survey results suggest that reducing recidivism is not a primary goal of many RJ programmes engaging with cases of sexual violence.…”

Routledge International Handbook of Restorative Justice

“…The most common method used to address selection bias is statistically controlling for initial group differences through multivariate analyses (e.g. Daly et al, 2013;de Beus and Rodriguez, 2007;Jeong et al, 2012;Luke and Lind, 2002;McGarrell and Hipple, 2007). These techniques allow researchers to control for the effects of measured covariates on reoffending outcomes.…”

“…finalization of formal caution, RJ programme, or court case) (e.g. Daly et al, 2013;Smith and Weatherburn, 2012); 4. Proven offence (e.g.…”

“…Frequency, or the average number or rate of reoffences per reoffender within a sample (e.g. Allard et al, 2009;Bergseth and Bouffard, 2007;Daly et al, 2013;Little, 2015;Luke and Lind, 2002;McGarrell and Hipple, 2007;Piggott, 2015;Shapland et al, 2008;Sherman et al, 2000;Smith and Weatherburn, 2012); 2. Seriousness, or the percentage of reoffenders in a sample who committed a more serious offense than their index offence (e.g.…”

“…However, such evaluation research has failed to report consistent findings. Although a number of studies have found that RJ programmes can reduce post-intervention offending (Allard et al, 2009;Baffour, 2006;Bouffard, 2007, 2013;Daly et al, 2013;de Beus and Rodriguez, 2007;Hayes, 2005;Luke and Lind, 2002;McGarrell et al, 2000;McGarrell and Hipple, 2007;Sherman et al, 2000), others have reported no significant effect (Jeong et al, 2012;McCold and Wachtel, 1998;Piggott, 2015;Shapland et al, 2008;Smith and Weatherburn, 2012). A small number of studies have also found RJ to increase the likelihood of reoffending (Bonta et al, 1983;Roy, 1993;Sherman et al, 2000;URSA Institute, 1993).…”