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NSW BUREAU OF CRIME STATISTICS AND RESEARCH, NSW CRIMINAL COURTS STATISTICS

INTRODUCTION

1 This report contains statistics relating to juvenile criminal matters finalised in New South Wales Children's, Local, District and Supreme Courts. Data are from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) NSW Criminal Courts Statistics.

2 Prior to January 2006, data on juvenile court appearances were provided by the Department of Juvenile Justice. These statistics are now provided by BOCSAR (see paragraph 18).

3 In this product, data are presented by principal offence.

SCOPE

4 The scope of the collection is all finalised court appearances in NSW courts, of persons aged 10-17 at the time of the original offence. This includes people who may no longer reside in NSW, and people who may be aged 18 years or over at the time of the court appearance. It also includes finalised court appearances where the outcome did not result in a conviction. It covers court appearances of juveniles in the Children's Court, Local, District and Supreme Courts.

REFERENCE PERIOD

5 The reference period for the collection is annual with data in the product presented for the 2006 calendar year.

KEY DATA ITEMS

6 The following key data items relate to the dated presented in this product:

7 Criminal offence: Criminal offences are defined under common law and recorded in accordance with the Australian Standard Offence Classification (ASOC) (cat. no. 1234.0).

8 Principal offence: As two or more offences can be dealt with at one time, a persons principal offence is deemed to be that which attracts the most severe penalty.

GEOGRAPHY

9 Data are coded to Local Government Area (LGA) based on the client's usual residence at the time of the finalised court appearance. The client's usual residence does not necessarily reflect their residence at the time the offence was committed nor the local at which the offence occurred.

10 Juvenile courts data was coded according to the Australian Standard Geographical Classification (ASGC) 2006 (cat. No. 1216.0). In this product data are presented for each Local Government Area in NSW.

COLLECTION METHODOLOGY

11 Higher Courts: Information for District Courts and the Supreme Court is obtained from court files and entered into the District Court's Case Tracking System. A monthly extract is then validated and compiled into BOCSAR datasets for extraction.

12 Computerised Children's and Local Courts: All computerised Local and Children's Courts enter case information into the General Local Court (GLC) system. A monthly extract is then validated by BOCSAR.

13 Non-computerised Local Courts: Paper coded forms are sent to BOCSAR where the data is entered and then validated.

14 Non-computerised Children's Courts: Paper coded forms are sent to the Department of Juvenile Justice who enter the data into their system. Quarterly extracts are then sent to BOCSAR for validation.

ACCURACY

15 Data is validated by BOCSAR before being compiled into datasets.

16 As this collection is a census, the data are not subject to sampling variability. However, other inaccuracies collectively referred to as non-sampling error may affect the data. These non-sampling errors may arise from a number of sources, including:

• data reporting errors by respondents;
• errors in capturing or processing data;
• definition and classification errors.