Nini Loh

Dope busts in the West: minor cannabis offences in the Western Australian criminal justice system.

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.

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

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 = 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 non-sexual 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 the enmeshment of key factors that set youth on differing legal pathways; this phenomenon affects studies comparing conference and court outcomes, whether in naturalistic settings or in randomised field experiments.

The Phantom of Deterrence: The Crime (Serious and Repeat Offenders) Sentencing Act

Throughout 1991 a car theft “crime wave” and a series of deaths arising from high-speed police pursuits had engendered an atmosphere of crisis in “law and order” in Western Australia. Prompted by these events, controversial legislation (the Crime (Serious and Repeat Offenders) Sentencing Act 1992) aimed at “high risk” juvenile offenders and increasing penalties was rushed through the Parliament of Western Australia in early 1992. A critique of the legislation illustrates that it both breached human rights and failed to address the difficulties of implementing selective incapacitation policies. Following the introduction of the new law the government claimed that downward trends in car theft, police high-speed pursuits and other offences were due to the deterrent effects of the increased penalties provided. The data, however, indicate that the decline in official records of car theft and juvenile convictions had begun prior to the introduction of the legislation. Significant correlations between reports of stolen vehicles and arrests for car theft (especially Aboriginal juvenile arrests) were found but not for police high-speed pursuits or arrests of persistent offenders and reports of stolen vehicles. This suggests that targeting “hard core” juvenile offenders had, at best, modest and temporary effects on vehicle theft. While a sharp decline in the relevant statistics was observed around the time of the passage of the law, this proved short-lived and other factors, such as changes in policing (the introduction of cautioning, the formation of a special motor vehicle task force, and stricter guidelines on pursuits) are more compelling explanations than the deterrent aims of the legislation.

Inter-Racial Offending Models: A Response to Reidpath and Diamond

We present a critique of a paper on inter-racial offending by Reidpath and Diamond (1998). That paper draws upon, but misrepresents, three publications by researchers at the Crime Research Centre, University of Western Australia. Our critique provides a necessary clarification of the contents of the original research and includes a brief discussion of its context and purposes. While we point out a number of conceptual and numerical errors in the Reidpath and Diamond paper, we are more interested in advancing ideas on the role of modelling in criminology. Modelling exercises need to be closely linked to substantive explanation and theory if they are to avoid sterility.