This does not mean, however, that juveniles are responsible for the majority of recorded crime. On the contrary, police data indicate that juveniles (10 to 17 year olds) comprise a minority of all offenders who come into contact with the police. This is primarily because offending ‘peaks’ in late adolescence, when young people are aged 18 to 19 years and are no longer legally defined as juveniles.
The proportion of all alleged offending that is attributed to juveniles varies across jurisdictions and is impacted by the counting measures that police in each state and territory use. The most recent data available for each jurisdiction indicate that:
juveniles comprised 21 percent of all offenders processed by Victoria Police during the 2008–09 financial year (Victoria Police 2009);
Queensland police apprehended juveniles (10 to 17 year olds) in relation to 18 percent of all offences during the 2008–09 financial year (Queensland Police Service 2009);
juveniles comprised 16 percent of all persons arrested in the Australian Capital Territory during the 2008–09 period (AFP 2009);
eighteen percent of all accused persons in South Australia during 2007–08 were juveniles (South Australia Police 2008);
juveniles were apprehended in relation to 13 percent of offence counts in Western Australia during 2006 (Fernandez et al. 2009); and
in the Northern Territory during 2008–09, eight percent of persons apprehended by the police were juveniles (NTPF&ES 2009).
It should be acknowledged in relation to the above that the proportion of offenders comprised by juveniles varies according to offence type. This is discussed in more detail below.