Youth Detention Population in Australia 2017
Jan 19, 2018
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) "Youth Detention Population in Australia 2017" bulletin reports on rates of young people aged 10 and over in youth detention over a 4 year period from 2013-2017. On an average night during the reporting period more than 950 young people were in detention. Over half (53%) of those in detention identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. This level of Indigenous over-representation can be expressed as a rate ratio; there were 37 Indigenous young people per 10 000 in detention on an average night compared with 1.5 per 10 000 non-Indigenous people, therefore as a national average Indigenous young people aged 10-17 were 24 times as likely as non-Indigenous young people to be in detention. Excluding Victoria, 64% of young people in detention on an average night in the June quarter 2017 were unsentenced. The state of Queensland had the second largest rates of young people in detention after New South Wales.