Troy John Allard

Understanding Juvenile Offending Trajectories

Abstract Aconsiderable amount of international research has adopted a criminal careers framework to improve our understanding of offending patterns across the life course. Recent innovations in statistical modelling techniques such as Semi-Parametric Group-based Method (SPGM) have provided researchers with tools to model offending trajectories. While this framework and these techniques may improve our understanding of life course offending patterns, few Australian studies have adopted such an approach. SPGM was employed in the current study to model the offending patterns of the 1983–84 Queensland offender cohort (n = 4,470) to address three research questions: (1) How many distinct offending trajectories could be identified and what was the nature of these trajectories? (2) How were sex, Indigenous status, socioeconomic disadvantage, and remoteness related to offending trajectory membership? and (3) Are juvenile offending trajectories predictors of adult offending? Findings indicated that there were three distinct groups of juvenile offenders: Early Peaking-Moderate Offenders, Late Onset-Moderate Offenders, and Chronic Offenders. Males and Indigenous offenders were overrepresented in the chronic offending trajectory. Support for the utility of the model was found, as Chronic Offenders were more likely to have offended as adults. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed and the need for further trajectory research within an Australian context is emphasised.

The impact of institutional factors on student academic results: implications for ‘quality’ in universities

This paper situates the topic of student assessment and the moderation of assessment within a broader context of policy debates about the quality of teaching and learning in universities. The focus and discussion grew out of a research project that aimed to investigate factors related to academic success and failure in a Faculty of Arts. The study, initially, identified a range of student demographic and biographical factors significantly related to academic success and failure. However, there was also evidence of pronounced differences in grading practices between different components (courses, programs, schools) within the institution. The paper explores the implications of such inconsistencies for the institutional mechanisms and processes that have typically been advocated as sufficient safeguards of quality. It concludes that the tendency of governments and other stakeholders to now champion performance indicators, along with the shifting focus towards quality ‘outcomes’, are likely to increasingly throw the strengths and weaknesses of institutional assessment practices into stark relief.

The monetary cost of offender trajectories: Findings from Queensland (Australia)

This study assessed the longitudinal costs of offender trajectories in Queensland (Australia) to provide policymakers with evidence that could be used to promote the use of crime prevention programs. Few studies have assessed these costs and minimal research has been conducted outside the United States. The study addressed three research questions: (1) What are the monetary costs of crime? (2) What is the optimal number of offender trajectories in an Australian offender cohort? and (3) What are the monetary costs of officially recorded offending for individuals on different offender trajectories? The Semi-Parametric Group-based Method (SPGM) was used to determine the number of offender trajectories in the Queensland Longitudinal Database. This database included 41,377 individuals who were born in 1983 and 1984 and guilty of offences in Queensland that were committed when aged 10–25 years old. The costs of crime were assessed using two approaches. First, criminal justice system costs were estimated based on the number and type of contacts that individuals had with the criminal justice system as well as the length of any supervision served. Second, wider social and economic costs were assessed based on offence type. Results indicated that there were five offender trajectories, including two chronic, one moderate and two low trajectories. When costs were applied to the offender trajectories, offenders in the two chronic groups were 4.8% of the cohort but accounted for 41.1% of the total costs. On average, each chronic offender cost between

Personal and institutional characteristics of student failure

186,366 and

Criminal Justice Education, Employment Destinations, and Graduate Satisfaction

262,799 by the time they turned 26 years old, with 60% of the costs accounted for by the criminal justice system. On average, each chronic offender cost over 20 times more than offenders in the two low offending groups. These findings provide further evidence for the potential benefits of implementing interventions that target chronic offenders.

Administrative data linkage as a tool for developmental and life-course criminology: the Queensland Linkage Project

There is a limited literature on academic failure in higher education despite the fact that failure is a common experience among undergraduates. Student and course characteristics were examined in relation to proportions of fail grades assigned in a Faculty of Arts. Concerns had been expressed that combinations of two grades, F (failure to reach a satisfactory standard) and FNS (failure to submit assessment work), resulted in high fail rates. Regression analyses indicated that students assigned higher proportions of fail grades tended to be male, Indigenous, younger, had lower entry scores, had deferred fees, were not full‐time day students, lived at home, and had histories of incomplete studies. However, university entrance score was the strongest predictor of F, while being male and deferring payment of fees were the strongest predictors of FNS. Variations in awarding types and levels of fail grades were evident between schools in the faculty, indicating different grading practices. The findings suggest that personal and institutional factors interacted to increase the risk of academic failure for these students.

Attitudes of criminal justice students to Australian indigenous people: Does higher education influence student perceptions?

Abstract The article addresses the lack of sound empirical research both overseas and especially in Australia on the outcomes of criminal justice education. The very limited research on graduate outcomes is potentially problematic at a time when governments are increasingly calling for program accountability and evaluation in higher education. The article reports on an empirical study of one criminology/criminal justice program that investigated the employment destinations of graduates. Principal components analysis and regression analyses were used to explore graduate satisfaction with their degree. There was evidence that educational outcomes were important considerations when alumni evaluated their degree. However, findings indicated that satisfaction varied considerably between occupational groups and was influenced by employment experiences and perceived ‘success’ in the workforce. The article addresses various themes emerging from the findings and identifies the need for further research across other programs on the outcomes of criminal justice education and graduate destinations.

On being realistic about reducing the prevalence and impacts of youth sexual violence and abuse in two Australian Indigenous communities

A fundamental challenge to developmental and life-course (DLC) criminology research is access to appropriate longitudinal data to examine hypotheses concerning causal risk factors for offending and within-individual change over time, and to empirically test DLC theories. In this paper we present a powerful method for collecting appropriate data – linked administrative data. The Queensland Linkage Project includes three population-based longitudinal linked administrative databases – the Queensland Longitudinal Data (QLD) – QLD 83, QLD 84 and QLD 90. We describe the methodology of linking administrative data, the establishment of the QLD datasets and a selection of the work facilitated by these data. This work addresses issues raised by the editors including the effects of life events and the timing of risk factors (child maltreatment) on further offending, the monetary costs of offending across the life-course and the development of adult-onset offending. We finish by describing current work on the Queensland Linkage Project where mental health system data are being integrated with justice system data.

Responding to youth sexual offending: a field-based practice model that “closes the gap” on sexual recidivism among Indigenous and non-Indigenous males

Over the past 10–15 years Australian universities have established degrees for those who wish to work in the criminal justice system in areas such as policing, corrections, and crime prevention. This paper explores the sensitivity of undergraduates to issues of race and diversity. It investigates the beliefs that criminal justice students bring with them to university, their readiness for content that focuses on Aboriginality, and whether their views change in ways over time. The study finds that policing majors are more negative than other criminal justice students and that, in any case, there tends to be little change in attitudes over time for students as a whole. To explain these findings, the paper then looks at the teaching of indigenous issues in Australian criminal justice programs based on a survey of program convenors. The consensus is that pedagogy/curriculum in the area lacks thoroughness and rigour when confronting the complexities of the problem.

Entering Youth Justice: Comparing the Views of Human Services and Criminology Students

Social interventions, like medical ones, can produce negative as well as positive outcomes. It is important for policy and practice to learn what works, what doesn’t work, and what produces unintended effects, for whom and in what contexts. This is the task of realist evaluation. The formulation and evaluation of programs aiming to deal with problems in Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities face a number of practical, conceptual and methodological problems. Here, realist methods for the design and evaluation of promising programs from which transferable lessons can be derived are discussed in the context of an initiative aiming to reduce the prevalence and impacts of youth sexual violence and abuse. Tentative conclusions are drawn for what this might mean for programs targeting similar problems elsewhere. 7 Learning Communities International Journal of Learning in Social Contexts | Special Issue: Evaluation | Number 14 – September 2014 introduction and background Griffith Youth Forensic Service Neighbourhoods Project (GYFS-NP) aims to reduce the prevalence and impacts of youth sexual violence and abuse (YSVA) in two Australian communities – a remote Aboriginal community, and a culturally diverse suburban precinct within a regional city. It aims to do so by engaging closely with the local communities, measuring various aspects of the problem in a variety of ways, and developing, implementing and evaluating a suite of locally-tailored interventions. Because of the context-specific nature of the targeted problems, these particular interventions may not be directly transferrable to other sites or to other related social problems. At the same time, the project aims to develop and test an over-arching prevention model that is transferable to a wide variety of places, problems, and contexts. YSVA has emerged as a hitherto only partially recognised problem in some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous)1 communities. It is experienced in remote communities as well as within communities embedded in towns and cities. It takes the form of rape, prostitution, ‘rough sex’ in which girls appear to be resigned to being treated as objects of sexual satisfaction to boys, inculcation of children into highly sexualised peer groups, sexual teasing, self-abuse, and inappropriate touching. The project whose evaluation is the concern of this paper began with an exploration of a range of data on the extent of YSVA in the project’s target areas, and particularly amongst the Indigenous people residing in these areas. Data were assembled going back for as long as a decade. Rates of pregnancy amongst young girls, sexually transmitted infections, and recorded sex offences were many times higher within the project’s target areas and amongst Indigenous residents than amongst the general population. Systematic observations were also made at key public locations within the project areas where it was thought that antisocial behaviour might be taking place, when it was deemed safe enough, not in the expectation that YSVA would be seen directly but to gauge the number and basic attributes of those present, what they were doing, and the presence or otherwise of formal and informal guardians. The project is led by psychologists based at Griffith University whose work has specialised in the assessment and treatment of court-referred youth sexual offenders. Work with these youth strongly suggested that the incidents coming to the attention of the authorities, particularly in the two target communities, represent only a small fraction of the total number of incidents occurring. Indeed it suggested that some forms of YSVA might be endemic in the two locations of concern (Smallbone & Rayment-McHugh, 2013). Following an earlier study that aimed to empirically examine the scope, dimensions and dynamics of YSVA in these two communities (Smallbone, Rayment-McHugh, & Smith, 2013a), Australian Government funding was secured to support a three-year program that would devise, deliver and evaluate strategies to reduce the extent and 1. We are mindful of sensitivities about terms used to refer to Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. We have used the term ‘Indigenous’ in this paper because it accords with references to policies and other documents. On being realistic about reducing the prevalence and impacts of youth sexual violence | Tilley