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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 9 Hansard (28 August) . . Page.. 3461 ..


    The ACT Children's Plan, which is to include a strong emphasis on early intervention for those children aged 0-12 years who are considered to be at risk;

    "Turnaround"- the recently announced service delivery program for those children aged 12-18 years exhibiting complex needs;

    Consideration to expand options for restorative justice and diversionary conferencing; and

    Documenting and accounting for all initiatives that aim to reduce the involvement of young people in crime under the one strategic blueprint.

(6) Funding provided from the DJACS crime prevention budget for the Constable Kenny Koala program over the past three years is as follows:

2001-02: $135,302

2002-03: $150,000

2003-04: $139,070

(7) As an indication of the use and acceptance of the Constable Kenny Koala program, school bookings usually run at two to three bookings per week and sometimes higher, for example, 10 per week in the last two weeks of August 2003.

(8) Collecting and analyzing crime data is fraught with many definitional and interpretive problems. For example, not all crimes are reported to police. Typically, low-level theft and wilful damage, assaults within relationship settings, and sexual assault tend to have low reporting rates. Insurance reporting protocols help elevate the reporting rates of motor vehicle theft and burglary. Of those offences that are reported, many will not be cleared, and the lowest clear up rates usually relate to property crime. We do not know who committed the offences that have not been cleared.


Therefore, our recorded statistics on juvenile crime only tell us about those who have been apprehended and those put before the courts.


Given these caveats it would be dangerous to rely upon the statistical data that is available to us on offences per suburb, committed by known apprehended juveniles, to provide us with an accurate picture of juvenile crime in each suburb.


The Assembly is provided each quarter with statistics on a range of criminal justice indicators including the number of young people before the Children's Court, the nature of the most serious charge for each defendant, the disposition of the case, and the number of young people on remand or committed to the Quamby Youth Centre.


Apart from being tabled quarterly in the Assembly these data are also available on the DJACS website at http://www.jcs.act.gov.au/eLibrary/crimestats.html .

Disability Program

(Question No 907)

Mrs Burke asked the Minister for Disability, Housing and Community Services, upon notice:

In relation to the Disability Program:


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