Abstract
Mental illness is firmly established as a risk factor for criminal legal system contact, particularly for women and Indigenous people. While patterns of criminal legal contact vary by gender and Indigenous status, we do not know how mental health contacts factor into these patterns. The aim of this research is to examine whether mental health characteristics and service contacts vary across patterns of criminal legal system contact defined by group-based trajectory modelling and to explore whether any such variation is consistent across gender and Indigenous status. Using linked administrative data from a 1990 Australian birth cohort (to age 23/24 years, N = 45,141), we estimate trajectories of criminal legal system contact and assess variation across groups defined by gender and Indigenous status. We then examine whether types of mental illness diagnoses and mental health service contacts varied across trajectory groups and whether this was consistent across gender and Indigenous status. Findings point to important differences in mental health system contact across offending trajectory groups. Differences are suggestive of variation in mental health system utilization at the intersection of gender and Indigenous statuses that are conditioned by patterns of criminal legal system contact. We conclude by outlining the implications of these patterns for life course theories of offending and for gender and culturally informed support and interventions directed towards system-involved individuals with mental health needs.
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Data availability
The data for the study are held in Social Analytics Lab (SAL) at Griffith University and used with permission from the relevant data custodians. The linked administrative data used in this study is owned by the respective Queensland Government agencies and access is managed by the Queensland Government Statistician’s Office and cannot be made available to third parties by the authors. The datasets analysed during the current study are not publicly available due to restrictions placed on the datasets by the data custodians but can be made available upon reasonable request and with permission of the relevant data custodians and the Queensland Government Statistician’s Office. Any researcher interested in accessing the data can submit an application to the SAL management committee (socialanalyticslab@griffith.edu.au) with the relevant support and approvals.
Notes
In this paper, we respectfully refer to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as Indigenous peoples or Indigenous Australians.
The youth justice system in Queensland has undergone multiple name changes since the data were extracted and is currently integrated in a single agency named “Department of Children, Youth Justice and Multicultural Affairs.”.
At the time of data recording, diversions in Queensland were primarily available for youths, though they were available in a very limited capacity for adults.
Other cap sizes for offense counts were tested (i.e., 50 and 100) with 75 selected, as this allowed for greatest consistency in estimating stable trajectory solutions. For example, a cap at 50 offenses limited variation in the high-rate offending classes. In contrast, a cap at 100 offenses resulted in outlier cases impacting trajectory shapes.
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Acknowledgements
The industry partners on the grant supporting this research were Queensland Health; Department of Premier and Cabinet, Office of Economic and Statistical Research (Queensland Treasury, now called the Queensland Government Statistician’s Office [QGSO]); Department of Children, Youth Justice and Multicultural Affairs; Queensland Police; Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney General and Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages. We thank our government partners for the helpful comments on a previous version of this paper. The authors gratefully acknowledge the use of the services and facilities of the Griffith Criminology Institute’s Social Analytics Lab at Griffith University. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the departments or agencies, and any errors of omission or commission are the responsibility of the authors.
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This research was funded by the Australian Research Council grant number LP100200469. The funder had no role in the study design, the collection, analysis and interpretation of the data, the writing of the report, or the decision to submit the article for publication. JO was supported by a Griffith University Postdoctoral Research Fellowship.
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LB, AS, CT and SD conceived the study, with JO, LB, SD, CT and TA contributing to the study design. Data preparation and analysis were performed by JO. The first draft of the method and results were written by JO. AK and LB wrote the first draft of the introduction. LB and JO wrote the first draft of the discussion. All the authors contributed to the subsequent versions of the manuscript. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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The requirement to obtain informed individual participant consent was waived given the use of historical de-identified administrative data, which was approved by the Griffith University Human Research Ethics Committee. The study was approved by the Griffith University Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC 2010/479). The authors assert that all the procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation, and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008.
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Ogilvie, J.M., Broidy, L., Thompson, C. et al. Trajectories of Offending and Mental Health Service Use: Similarities and Differences by Gender and Indigenous Status in an Australian Birth Cohort. J Dev Life Course Criminology 10, 97–128 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40865-023-00246-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40865-023-00246-x