Defined Terms

Detention means "Detention based youth justice supervision involves young people serving their sentence in a custodial environment."

 

17.4 Definitions of key terms

Community-based youth justice supervision

Community-based youth justice supervision is an alternative to detention, where a sentenced order or unsentenced order (such as conditional bail) is served in the community.

Detention-based youth justice supervision

Detention-based youth justice supervision involves young people serving their sentence in a custodial environment.

 

"Total recurrent expenditure on detention-based supervision, community-based supervision and group conferencing was $842.4 million across Australia in 2017-18, with detention-based supervision accounting for the majority of this expenditure (60.4 per cent, or $509.1 million) (table 17A.8). Nationally in 2017-18, recurrent expenditure on youth justice services per young person in the population aged 10–17 years (as distinct from per youth justice client, which is reported as a performance indicator in section 17.3) was $357 (figure 17.5)."

Box 17.14 Cost per young person subject to detention-based supervision -

‘Cost per young person subject to detention-based supervision’ is defined as recurrent expenditure on detention-based supervision per day, divided by the average daily number of young people subject to detention-based supervision.

     Recurrent expenditure per day is calculated as annual recurrent expenditure divided by 365.25.

     The average daily number of young people is calculated by summing the number of days each young person spends under supervision during the year (irrespective of age) and dividing this total by the number of days in the same year.

 

A low or decreasing average cost per day per young person is desirable as it suggests more efficient resource management.

Data reported for this indicator are:

  • not comparable across jurisdictions but are comparable (subject to caveats) within jurisdictions over time

  • complete (subject to caveats) for the current reporting period. All required 2017-18 data are available for all jurisdictions.