Safety, crime and justice : from data to policy Australian Institute of Criminology Conference

Transcription

1 Safety, crime and justice : from data to policy Australian Institute of Criminology Conference ABS House, Canberra, Australia 6-7 June 2005 CONFERENCE PAPER: CRIMINAL JUSTICE DATA: LIMITATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY RESEARCH Jayne Marshall Senior Research Officer, Office of Crime Statistics and Research, SA Attorney General s Department This conference was organised by the Australian Institute of Criminology in conjunction with the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

2 Introduction This paper presents the view that the criminal justice data available today is insufficient to address many of the research questions now being asked, and that this has significant implications for our ability to contribute to the development and evaluation of criminal justice policy. Focussing on the South Australian experience, I will provide a brief overview of the type of data available and the type of research it can support, and then discuss its limitations, with reference to a specific project conducted in South Australia in Finally, I will look at three options available to address the gap in current data collections, in particular, the option of cross agency data linkage. Criminal Justice Data in South Australia Currently in South Australia we have access to an enormous amount of criminal justice data, held in a range of mainframe based data collections relating to operational systems maintained by SA Police (SAPOL), the Courts Administration Authority, Child Youth and Family Services, and the Department for Correctional Services. We are able to determine the number of criminal incidents reported to police and the type of offences involved. We know when they occurred and/or were reported to police and the location they occurred (down to collection district level). For incidents involving a victim, we also have information about the victim, such as gender and age, and their relationship to the offender. SAPOL also records significant detail regarding police apprehensions, including date of alleged offence, type of offence, location of offence, age, sex, Indigenous status and home address (collection district level) of the alleged offender. In addition to SA Police, the SA Courts Administration Authority records considerable detail regarding court appearances, including date, charges considered, reasons for adjournment, bail/remand outcomes, charge outcomes (eg guilty or not guilty) and penalties. This is linked to SAPOL data via an apprehension report number. For those persons sentenced to imprisonment or community corrections, information is also recorded regarding the date of imprisonment and release, or completion of a community order. From an historical perspective, we have the Offender History File, which includes all offences charged and all outcomes for a large number of individuals from the year We are also fortunate in South Australia to have an integrated Justice Information System that, through the use of unique identifiers, allows us to link incidents, apprehensions, court appearances and court outcomes, as well as correctional data, and track matters as they pass though the criminal justice system. What types of research or policy question can we answer using these comprehensive databases? In general, we can provide information on the what, where and when of reported crime, and the South Australian Criminal Justice System response to this reporting, for both adults and juveniles. To a certain level, we can also inform policy makers about the who of crime (for example, sex, age and Indigenous Status). So, for example, we are able to produce our Crime and Justice Report each year, which includes all of these complexities and more. These data are useful in a number of ways. We can monitor trends in the number of recorded offences - in general or by specific offence type - from 1 July We can also look at the age, gender and Indigenous status of offenders, and the age and gender of victims, to assist in understanding the nature of such offending, as well as the impact of legislative and administrative initiatives such as the creation of new offences, or new penalties, or police campaigns targeting certain types of offences or offending in particular areas. So, for example, we can show that the overall number of recorded crimes in South Australia increased between 1997 and 2001 but has been decreasing in recent years. More specifically, we can show that the number of armed robbery offences were generally lower between 1993 and 1997 than from 1998 onwards. In addition, using the unique identifier ascribed to every person who comes into contact with the criminal justice system and the link between incident reports, apprehension reports and court files, we can track individuals and incidents through the criminal justice system. Some years ago OCSAR looked at the then relatively new offence of stalking - following incidents through from incident report to court to determine the nature of the offence and the outcomes for offenders, which was then used to determine how that legislation was operating in practice. 2

3 Using the unique identifier we can also determine the number of times a person is apprehended, appears in court, is fined or imprisoned - which in turn can inform policy regarding recidivism and chronic offending. For example, recent research by Grace Skrzypiec in OCSAR has looked at chronic offending in persons aged 16 to 20 in 2003/04 to assist in determining appropriate strategies for intervention. It was found that about 40% of the youths apprehended in this age bracket had only one criminal event recorded against them, while at the other end of the scale, 8% had 15 or more events, including two males with 84 criminal events each (Skrzypiec 2005). We can also look at the recorded offending outcomes of individuals who participate in specialist courts such as the South Australian Drug Court, or Mental Impairment Court, to assist in evaluating the impact of these initiatives on the offending behaviour. Finally, the ability to track individuals through the criminal justice system also enables us to conduct studies looking at attrition rates through the system - for example child sexual offences have a very low conviction rate and to enable better outcomes for victims it is important to understand where and why these cases drop out of the system. That s the good news about South Australian criminal justice data collections. Limitations of current criminal justice databases However, despite the extensive amount of data collected, there are a number of limitations. The main disadvantage is that these systems provide little or no information relating to the why of crime and, as indicated, only a limited amount on the who. Because these systems are operational, not research based, they only include data pertaining to what is needed to progress and process the alleged offender through the criminal justice system in the most effective way. In general, depending upon the seriousness of the offending, police are primarily concerned with the elements of the offence and not the motivation. They do not necessarily need to record information about the circumstances that triggered the criminal event, either immediate or long term, including the specific characteristics of the individual or their family, neighbourhood or community. So, for example, they do not need to know that the person has mental health problems, extreme financial difficulty, drug issues or a gambling addiction to link the alleged offender to an offence. They do not need to record that the young person has experienced extreme family violence or abuse or neglect, that they have particular health issues and that the neighbourhood he or she lives in has high levels of youth unemployment and social disadvantage. It is noted that there is provision in the current South Australian police databases for recording employment status, occupational status, marital status and country of birth. However, these are not required fields and the information is often not recorded. The proportion of cases where these data are missing is extensive, rendering them of little or no use for research purposes. In some situations, this type of information is recorded in the narrative - a short textual description of the incident included in an incident or apprehension report. However, there are no rules as to what should be asked and recorded and therefore this type of information is not collected in a systematic way, if recorded at all. In addition, there is no way to access this information efficiently. These data have to be extracted manually and this, coupled with the fact that the relevant information may not be recorded anyway, is a considerable disincentive to the use of the narrative as a source of data. Example of limited research capacity: Study into the relationship between gambling and crime. One clear example of the limitations of current criminal justice databases is the study conducted by OCSAR in 2003 on the relationship between gambling and crime in South Australia (Marshall & Marshall 2004). The context of this research was very simple: there was increasing concern in the community over the negative impact of gambling, particularly the use of electronic gaming machines since they became legal in South Australia in OCSAR was asked by the IGA to look at the relationship between gambling and crime as one of the potentially negative impacts of gambling. There was substantial anecdotal evidence from gambling and financial counsellors to suggest a strong link, but the IGA was looking to be able to quantify this evidence. The IGA did acknowledge that data on gambling related crime may be difficult to collect and so the project objectives included an examination of available data, an assessment of potential data sources, and recommendations for improving the collection of relevant data in the future. 3

4 The analysis of available criminal justice data found that there was no systematic data collected, either quantitative or qualitative on gambling related crime. The only potential criminal justice sources for this type of data were police apprehension report narratives, special reports or notes in court hard files and sentencing remarks. However, even for these data sources, in cases where gambling had contributed to offending there was no guarantee that this information would be included. OCSAR therefore undertook an analysis of the narratives from 800 randomly selected apprehension reports completed in 2001: 100 for each of eight broad offence types: assault, drug offences, fraud, larceny, larceny of a motor vehicle, receiving, robbery and serious criminal trespass. Of the 800 reports reviewed, only six were found to have a reference which implied a direct link to gambling. Overall, 2% of fraud apprehensions, 2% of robbery apprehensions, 1% of larceny apprehensions and 1% of apprehensions for serious criminal trespass included information linking the offence to problem gambling. Five of the six involved the admission by the accused of an addiction to gambling, while one indicated that he had spent all his money on gambling. In addition to the analysis of apprehension reports, the study also involved a manual search of 500 files finalised in the Adelaide Magistrate Court (AMC) during The search was limited to files that involved at least one of two offence types with a known link to gambling, namely larceny and fraud. Accordingly, 250 files that included at least one larceny charge and 250 files that included at least one fraud charge were randomly selected from the total number of files involving these matters that were finalised in the AMC during 2002 (1,010 and 456 respectively). The relationship with gambling was detected by reading through any psychological reports, bail enquiry reports, letters from gambling counsellors, written bail conditions, reasons for refusal of bail and sentencing conditions included in the court file. Files that also included sentencing remarks were extracted and forwarded to the Court Reporting Section within the Courts Administration Authority where the original shorthand sentencing remarks were read by staff to identify any references to gambling. Where a reference was found, these reports were transcribed for further analysis. From the initial scan of the 500 randomly selected finalised AMC files, 12 of the 500 files (2.4%) were found to have a reference that linked the offences to gambling. Five included information from bail reports or psychologists reports linking the offence to gambling, while 10 had a reference to gambling in the sentencing remarks. Analysis was also conducted on sentencing remarks from the SA District and Supreme Courts. Of the 1800 remarks searched, only 23 were found to indicate a link between gambling and crime. In most of these the defendant had admitted to a gambling problem, or that they had committed the crime to obtain funds either to continue gambling or to replace money lost through gambling. Overall, then, the study found very little evidence of a relationship between gambling and crime from existing data sources. We included this result in the report, but we stressed that overall it meant very little, because there were no real mechanisms for reporting gambling as the motivation for crime. The fact that it wasn t mentioned did not mean that gambling was not involved. This was demonstrated clearly when we tracked the gambling related cases heard in the District Court (identified through sentencing remarks) back to the Magistrates Court and Police Apprehension data. Only 1 of the 23 cases had a reference to gambling in the relevant Magistrates Court file, while only five of the 18 apprehension reports that were traced identified gambling as a direct or indirect cause of the offending. The results from the analysis were therefore not very helpful to the Independent Gambling Authority in developing policy recommendations. In addition, there was also potential for misinterpretation or misuse of the results - if the caveats we included were overlooked it would appear that gambling related crime was an insignificant problem not worthy of government attention. This is just one example of the limitations of current criminal justice data, which demonstrates clearly how the lack of why and who data in South Australian criminal justice databases (and text or hard files) has significant implications for our ability to answer relevant questions about crime and criminal justice issues. This, in turn impacts upon our ability to provide policy makers with information that will enable them to make appropriate policy decisions and implement effective strategies and interventions. 4

5 Shift in the nature of research questions This problem has been compounded in recent years by a shift in the nature of research questions that are being asked of OCSAR. Increasingly we are being asked to look at the reasons why people become involved in crime, and certain types of crime, as well as the reasons why they persist or desist in these activities, to enable decisions to be made about who, when and where to target crime prevention interventions. We are also being asked to evaluate the impact of such interventions on crime trends. The shift towards specialised courts of therapeutic jurisprudence, such as drug courts, mental impairment courts and family violence courts, also demonstrates a recognition of the factors contributing to criminal behaviour, because they link offenders to specialist treatments and counselling to address the underlying causes of their behaviour. The evaluation of these programs in particular requires a greater depth of information about individuals than is currently available from criminal justice databases. The need for additional data to answer these research/policy questions is also reflected in the ABS Draft National Information Development Plan for Crime and Justice Statistics, as discussed in the previous session. The Plan, developed through extensive consultation with a range of Australian, state and territory agencies, has identified a number of priorities for statistical information development to improve gaps, deficiencies and relevance of crime and justice statistics in the why and the who of crime. These include improving crime and justice statistics about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, juvenile contact with the criminal justice system, family violence, substance abuse and mental health. What are the options to obtain additional data? One of the main strategies to overcome the limitations of current crime and justice data is for researchers to collect data separately for individual projects through surveys and interviews. The Drug Use Monitoring in Australia or DUMA project is a primary example of specific data collection to fill a gap in this case, in the information available about the about the link between illicit drug use and offending. The program, a national project managed by the Australian Institute of Criminology, measures the drug use of persons recently apprehended by police. The DUMA data are used to examine issues such as the relationship between drugs and property and violent crime and monitor patterns of drug use across time. The DUCO project, Drug Use Careers of Offenders, is another example which seeks, through an interview process, to measure drug use amongst sentenced offenders. Another strategy is to develop specific databases to enable the collection of data for long term projects. For example, OCSAR has been involved in the evaluation of the South Australian Drug Court, Mental Impairment Court and Police Drug Diversion Initiative which aims at diverting minor drug offenders from court, and one very positive trend has the involvement of OCSAR from the start in developing appropriate databases that would contribute both to the effective operation of the initiatives and the evaluation process. The advantage of this approach is that questions can be designed to be directly relevant to the study and researchers do not have to make do with data fields that do not completely reflect the concept being measured. In turn, this means that the findings are more likely to be valid. However, there are a number of disadvantages. The process of collecting data specific to a study is resource intensive: the time and the cost involved in developing appropriate questions, administering a survey or conducting interviews as well as data entry is often prohibitive, particularly when policy makers require information in the short term. Resource restrictions often limit the number of persons surveyed or interviewed, which has further implications for our ability to generalise the results beyond the study sample. There is also the issue of identifying and finding survey or interview participants, which can be very difficult given the general mobility of the offender population. Indigenous people, young, rural or disabled people are usually poorly represented in contact and seek consent studies often the very populations that we are most interested in. Even when we can locate individuals, and depending upon the nature of the research question, self report data is not necessarily the best source of data, particularly for studies where recall over time is required. Expanding existing criminal justice databases Another option to address the gap in criminal justice data is to expand the current criminal justice databases to make them more useful for current research purposes. To some extent this is already happening - in South Australia a drug/alcohol indicator has recently (January 2003) been added to the incidents and apprehension databases, enabling apprehending officers to record whether the offender is affected by drugs or alcohol. 5

6 Discussions are also underway to bring Indigenous Status data in line with national reporting requirements, involving a standard question along the lines of Are you of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin? This would be in addition to the current data item, which records racial appearance according to the opinion of the apprehending officer. Information on the Indigenous Status of victims will also be collected, which will enable us to extract information on the victimisation of Indigenous persons. SAPOL is also exploring the possibility of placing a flag on apprehension reports to indicate mental health issues or a gambling problem. There are a number of issues to note with regard to this approach, however. The first question is whether it is really the role of police to collect this information on individual characteristics and circumstancestraditionally the answer is no because they do not need that information to effectively process the apprehended person. On the other hand, with the introduction of a more holistic approach to policing, focussing on crime prevention and safe communities, as well as the introduction of specialist courts which deal with issues such as drug use, mental health and family violence, it could be argued that more information about the individual is essential to effective policing. The second issue relates to the resources required to support the collection and recording of additional information. How much information can be collected before it impacts upon the effectiveness of police day to day operations? Should information only be requested in particular circumstances - eg for more serious offences? Thirdly, how well equipped are police officers to illicit such information? And how practical is this requirement, especially when an apprehendee may be uncooperative, even violent. How do you identify whether a person has a mental impairment and/or is affected by alcohol or drugs? Some individual characteristics may not be physically obvious - for example problem gambling. This raises the question of whether the police would record the information only from the facts obtained as part of the apprehension process, or whether they would be required to ask direct questions. Direct questioning about gambling behaviour, for example, has implications for leading the investigation and providing the accused with a potential defence. Overall, considerable developmental work, training and monitoring would be required to ensure that the protocols for obtaining such information are consistent between police officers - otherwise the information is of little use. This again raises the issue of resources. These concerns also apply to the courts - with the added complication of who would collect the information. The courts are primarily focused on processing the individual through the system - with the courts clerk recording appearance dates, charges, adjournments, outcomes and penalties. In the context of recording information about the link between gambling and the offence, for example, who would make the decision that a link existed? Would it be appropriate for the Magistrate or Judge to direct the clerk to record such a link? Is it even appropriate for courts to collect data on individuals, given that they are required to be impartial and individual characteristics must have no bearing on the court process. On the other hand, Correctional Services is an area where a considerable amount of data concerning the individual could be collected and recorded, and which would enhance their ability to provide services, whether imprisonment or community corrections. While this information would be very useful, however, we can t rely on it because it represents only a small proportion of persons who come into contact with the criminal justice system. There is also the question of resources and practicality it wouldn t be feasible to collect data on those individuals who are only imprisoned for very short stays. Data linking The final option considered here is that of data linking. Across Australia, data linking between and within government agencies is an emerging issue that has the potential to contribute significantly to our knowledge of the why and who of crime. As indicated, within South Australia we already have the capacity to link criminal justice data, through the use of unique identifiers. However, across agencies such as health, housing, education, children and family services, there is a wealth of data collected that could provide much needed depth to our knowledge about individuals involved in the criminal justice system, to more effectively inform policy makers about the risk factors and protective factors associated with offending. 6

7 Take, for example, a study that OCSAR has just commenced in relation to the multiple service use of chronically offending youth. Anecdotal information suggests that chronically offending youth are also likely to have a history of contact with social service agencies. If true, it opens up important questions about the potential impact of service provision on the criminal pathways of young people. Yet, despite its importance, the link between chronic offending and multiple service use has not been empirically tested in Australia. In response, the Criminology Research Council is funding a 12 month consultancy. The main aim of the study is to examine the nature and extent of the relationship between chronic offending and multiple service use amongst young people (aged 10 to 17 years) and to identify policy implications, including identification of best practice in the type and timing of multiple service provision for chronic young offenders. The research will involve the selection of a group of chronic offenders and one or more comparison groups of non-chronic offenders. We intend to examine the service use records of these individuals, analysing data held by agencies such as health, housing education and family services to compare the extent of service use and the temporal relationship between service use and offending. However, the project cannot proceed without the ability to link data across multiple disciplines and agencies. The first stage of the project is therefore a feasibility study to determine whether the project can be successfully undertaken. As part of this study we have been looking at different types of data linking to inform our decision about how to progress the Consultancy. In general, much of the work on data linkage for research purposes across Australia has been conducted within the health area - an area characterised by a multitude of databases, both State and Commonwealth. The Western Australia Data Linkage System is currently Australia s only large scale linked data system for health research. It was established in 1995 through collaboration between the Centre for Health Services Research, Department of Public Health, UWA and the Health Information Centre, Department of Health. It is primarily responsible for the linkage of unit records of the core health data sets and other relevant data collections, and the provision of linked data to support health planning, purchasing, evaluation and research (Garfield et al 2003). The system comprises a core of six data sets: birth registrations, death registrations, hospital separations, mental health clients, cancer notifications and midwife notifications, that can be linked to Commonwealth Data Systems such as aged care assessment, other state systems such as the electoral roll or ambulance data. The records have also been geo-coded where possible to a location point and have ABS collector district attached. The linking system is structured using the chain of links method developed by Dr John Bass. It is based on a master links file, which has one or more records for each individual person identified by a chain number. For example, pointers for two hospital records for the same person are stored in the links file under the same linked chain number. The master links file and the source databases are kept independent in that the links file only stores pointers to the unit records and the chain numbers. It stands alone, cannot alter any databases and contains no intelligible information from other databases. (Garfield et al 2003) This system also enables families to be linked together - for example, a birth record would be linked to the chain number for the mother as well as the chain number for the baby. The ability to place an individual in the context of their family has considerable potential in relation to criminal justice research, because we know that the family situation of an individual is a significant risk or protective factor for offending. The Western Australia Data Linkage System has contributed to a number of research projects since its inception. In particular, in the near future it will undertake the linkage and data dissemination process of a major research project conducted by the University of Western Australia and five government jurisdictions within Western Australia, which is looking at the developmental pathways to health, education and delinquent outcomes, to inform early intervention strategies. One of the main aims of the project is to create an extensive data linkage across multiple disciplines and government sectors. The linkage will provide data to enable the identification of risk and protective factors for healthy human development at multiple levels: individual, cross-individual, family and community. Within South Australia, a number of initiatives are currently underway in the area of data linking. The Clients in Common Project is a major joint project of the Department of Health and the Department of Families and Communities. The project includes administrative data from 10 providers and 55 datasets in the health and human services area (including Hospitals, community health, mental health services, Housing and family and youth services), and at a unit record level uses spatial and record linkage techniques to link these data. The underlying purpose of the project is to provide a de-identified dataset to help analyse the use of multiple services to inform service provision and program development. 7

8 This project is one of the few projects across Australia to link multiple human service administrative data sets outside of the health sector. Data gathering has recently been completed and analysis is set to commence in the near future. A final data linking project I would like to mention is one conducted for operational purposes within the South Australian Courts Administration Authority, specifically the Fines Payment Unit, in response to concern about difficulties in locating individuals with outstanding fines. At present the government is owed some $50 million from these persons, and so there is considerable support for initiatives to retrieve the funds, such as data linking with other agencies, like Housing, Motor Registration or Centrelink, to obtain a valid address. The project, in collaboration with the Microsoft Innovation Centre, developed a proto-type data matching and retrieval system called the hub. The main feature of this system is its ability to incorporate privacy approvals negotiated between individual agencies, to control the type of data items that flow between the agencies. For example, Agency 1 may request several data items from Agency 2, providing name and date of birth as a matching criteria. Before processing the request, the system will check that Agency 1 has approval to provide these data items to Agency 2. If the request goes ahead, and Agency 2 provides data in return, the system will also check that Agency 1 has approval to receive all the data items sent by Agency 2. While this system was developed for future operational purposes, it has potential for data linking for research purposes, as the privacy approval levels (and subsequently the data that is shared) can be altered according to the project being undertaken. The concept of the hub has two advantages. In the first instance it is a completely transparent process, incorporating a table that contains all of the privacy agreements between agencies. Secondly, the people who are responsible for the project have control over the matching process, and the level of discretion used to determine what constitutes a match. The main point of describing these initiatives is to illustrate that data linking across government sectors is happening, even if it is in its early stages and much of the work is being driven outside of criminal justice. As indicated earlier, there are considerable gaps in our knowledge about the individuals who are involved in the criminal justice system and these examples show that the technology, and the will, exists to address these gaps. There are, of course, a number of issues to consider in relation to data linking. In the first instance, linking administrative datasets across government sectors is of little benefit if the data held in these datasets is substandard eg, missing, inconsistent or even inaccurate. For data linking to be effective, the agencies involved must have comprehensive, valid, reliable and comparable data. Secondly, we have to be mindful of the individual s right to privacy. Just because we can link data, it doesn t necessarily mean that we should. Research studies using linked data would still have to demonstrate that they are in the interests of the community, are consistent with relevant privacy principles or guidelines and will, of course, still have to obtain ethics committee approval. One method to protect privacy is to separate the data provider from the person who links the data, and again from the person who analyses the data, as per the Western Australian Data Linking System. Alternatively, the hub system described earlier incorporates a unique methodology for ensuring that privacy agreements are adhered to. Another approach is to shift the focus to the imposition of strict penalties for those that breach privacy and confidentiality protocols. While there may be concern that data linking is an invasion of privacy, as outlined in Professor Fiona Stanley s address to the 25 th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners in September 2003 (reference), the technology to provide de-identified data is already in place and linked data has the power to deliver significant public benefits. Professor Stanley s comments were centred on data linking for health research, but they are also relevant to criminal justice. She argued that we should make use full use of existing data for both scientific validity and cost effectiveness. She noted that it is possible to provide de-identified data to researchers without an individual s consent and with little risk to the individual s right to privacy, enabling the conduct of high quality research in the public interest. Professor Stanley also presented a moral argument in that linked data is more inclusive of all those underrepresented or excluded in many studies. She also noted that record linkage may be more acceptable to obtain information on sensitive issues that people may find difficult to report on in survey or interview situations. 8

9 In summary, despite having access to a considerable range of linked criminal justice datasets in South Australia, there are significant gaps in our information base that limit our capacity to undertake research on crime and criminal justice issues and to develop and evaluate appropriate policy responses. Of the three options presented here, I propose that data linking is the way forward and that we need to support and expand the current initiatives. 9

10 References: Garfield, C., Rosman, D., and Bass, J. (2003) Inside the Western Australian Data Linkage System Symposium on Health Data Linkage 2003 available at: Marshall, J. and Marshall, A. (2003) Gambling and Crime in South Australia Office of Crime Statistics and Research December 2003 available at: Skrzypiec, G. (2005) Offending at 16 to 20 years of age: Identifying Youth for Intensive Intervention Office of Crime Statistics and Research 2005 available at: 10