Abstract
Demographic projections can provide an evidential basis for the assessment of the future demand for criminal court services and facilities, and the future need for related staff, such as judges and magistrates. This chapter assesses the implications of projected changes in the size, composition and geographical distribution of the population of New South Wales (Australia) for the volume and geospatial dimensions of crime-related court service provision. The method involves application of court appearance rates by age, sex and local area to projections of the population. The results illustrate the pivotal importance of uncertainty relating to whether recent general declines in court appearance rates will continue. Under the assumption of constant court appearance rates, total court appearances are projected to increase by 18 % between 2012 and 2031. This is less than the 27 % projected growth of the population because of the concomitant increase in the share of older people, who have a lower propensity to appear before the courts. The projected percentage increases in court appearances are generally greater in Sydney, especially in Western and South-Western Sydney, whilst reductions are projected in regional New South Wales. In contrast, under the assumption of a linear extrapolation of trends in court appearance rates since 2002, a 10 % reduction in total court appearances between 2012 and 2031 is projected. The implications of the results for policies relating to court demand mitigation, judicial recruitment and retirement, judicial productivity, the provision of court infrastructure, and the geospatial dimensions of court service provision are discussed.
The authors would like to thank Nicole Mahoney for her invaluable assistance in preparing the maps included in this chapter and Alison Taylor, the former Chief Demographer at the New South Wales Department of Planning and Environment, for providing the population projections for 2011–2031 by age and sex for NSW Local Government Areas. We also express our gratitude to Dr. Don Weatherburn, Director of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, for guidance in the formative stages of the study.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
For Australia as a whole in 2012, criminal work accounted for 70 % of judicial time in magistrates courts, 68 % in District Courts, and 32 % in Supreme Courts (Opeskin 2013).
- 2.
At the local area level, the most recent publicly available NSW projections are not disaggregated by sex, and a higher level of age group aggregation is reported for small population areas.
- 3.
Where age or sex data, or both, were missing, court appearances were distributed among age-sex cohorts in the relevant LGA with weights based on the demographic composition of the local population. However, court appearances involving defendants with no fixed or known address, or defendants residing in institutions, interstate or overseas were excluded. As a result, the count of court appearances aggregated over LGAs is lower than the total count of court appearances in NSW. However, there is no marked difference in the evolution of these two series over time, and the lower count thus serves as a satisfactory proxy measure for analysing trends for NSW overall.
- 4.
A 1999 survey of 68 magistrates revealed that ‘two-thirds of all the respondents estimated that they spent between 10 and 20 % of their work time dealing with AVOs’ (Potas 1999).
- 5.
On average there were 2.6 attendances per finalisation in the NSW Magistrates Court and 3.1 in the District Court in NSW in 2013–2014 (Productivity Commission 2015).
- 6.
For evidence specific to NSW see Devery (1991).
- 7.
Least squares methods could alternatively be employed to estimate historical linear trends in court appearance rates. These methods would reduce the influence of the first and most recent observation on the projections. However, the predicted values implied by least squares models can be out of step with observed court appearance rates at any one time.
- 8.
Local areas with small populations occupy the extremes of this distribution. This partly reflects volatility in measures of court appearance rates, and consequent volatility in trends.
References
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2011). Socio-economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA), Technical paper, Cat. No. 2033.0. 55.001. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2015). Australian demographic statistics: March 2015. Cat. No. 3101.0. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Australian Law Reform Commission. (2006). Same crime, same time: Sentencing of federal offenders. ALRC No. 103. Sydney: Australian Law Reform Commission.
Crawford, J., & Opeskin, B. (2004). Australian courts of law. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Devery, C. (1991). Disadvantage and crime in New South Wales. Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.
District Court of New South Wales. (2015). Annual review 2014. Sydney: District Court.
Farrington, D. P. (1986). Age and crime. Crime and Justice, 7, 189–250.
Fentress, K. (2000). Long-range facility planning for federal courts. Journal of Judicial Administration, 9, 134–152.
Kirby, M. (1998). Acting judges: A non-theoretical danger. Journal of Judicial Administration, 8, 69–76.
Levitt, S. D. (1999). The limited role of changing age structure in explaining aggregate crime rates. Criminology, 37, 581–598.
Local Court of New South Wales. (2015). Annual review 2014. Sydney: Local Court.
Mack, K., Wallace, A., & Roach Anleu, S. (2012). Judicial workload: Time, tasks and work organisation. Melbourne: Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration.
Moffatt, S., Weatherburn, D., & Donnelly, N. (2005). What caused the recent drop in property crime? Crime and Justice Bulletin, 85, 1–15.
Moffitt, T. E. (1993). Adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent antisocial behavior: A developmental taxonomy. Psychological Review, 100, 674–701.
NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. (2015). New South Wales criminal court statistics 2014. Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.
NSW Department of Education. (2015). Teaching workforce supply and demand. Sydney: NSW Department of Education.
NSW Department of Planning and Environment. (2015). Population projections [Online]. Sydney: NSW Department of Planning and Environment. Available: www.planning.nsw.gov.au/Research-and-Demography/Demography/Population-Projections. Accessed 19 Nov 2015.
NSW Police. (2003). Annual report 2002–2003. Sydney: NSW Police.
NSW Police Force. (2013). Annual report 2012–13. Sydney: NSW Police Force.
NSW Treasury. (2012). NSW long-term fiscal pressures report: NSW intergenerational report 2011–12 (Budget paper No. 6). Sydney: NSW Treasury.
Opeskin, B. (2011). The high cost of judges: Reconsidering judicial pensions and retirement in an ageing population. Federal Law Review, 39, 33–70.
Opeskin, B. (2013). The state of the judicature: A statistical profile of Australian courts and judges. Sydney Law Review, 35, 489–517.
Opeskin, B. (2015). Models of judicial tenure: Reconsidering life limits, age limits and term limits for judges. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 35, 627–663.
Opeskin, B., & Parr, N. (2014). Population, crime and courts: Demographic projections of the future workload of the New South Wales Magistracy. Journal of Judicial Administration, 23, 233–252.
Parr, N. (2014). Fertility levels and intentions in New South Wales. Report commissioned by the centre for demography, policy and research. Sydney: NSW Department of Planning and Environment.
Parr, N., Boyages, J., Taylor, R., Anura, P., & Callaghan, T. (2000). Projecting mammographic screens. Journal of Medical Screening, 7, 146–151.
Piquero, A. R., Farrington, D. P., & Blumstein, A. (2003). The criminal career paradigm. Crime and Justice, 30, 359–506.
Potas, I. (1999). Executive summary: Apprehended violence orders: A survey of magistrates [Online]. Sydney: Judicial Commission of New South Wales. Available: www.judcom.nsw.gov.au/publications/research-monographs-1/monograph20/Executive%20summary.html. Accessed 18 Nov 2015.
Productivity Commission. (2015). Report on government services Vol. C. Justice. Canberra:Productivity Commission.
Ralston, N. (2015). NSW prison population hits record high forcing police to ‘Babysit’ inmates. Sydney Morning Herald, 3 February.
Rosevear, L. (2007). Australian crime trends and population ageing: A quantified perspective. Flinders Journal of Law Reform, 10, 831–847.
Rosevear, L. (2012). The impact of structural ageing on crime trends: A South Australian case study. Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice, 431, 1–6.
Supreme Court of New South Wales. (2015). Annual review 2014. Sydney: Supreme Court.
Sweeten, G., Piquero, A. R., & Steinberg, L. (2013). Age and the explanation of crime, revisited. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 42, 921–938.
Wan, W.-Y., Moffatt, S., Jones, C., & Weatherburn, D. (2012). The effect of arrest and imprisonment on crime. Crime and Justice Bulletin, 158, 1–20.
Weatherburn, D., & Holmes, J. (2013). The great property crime drop: A regional analysis. Crime and Justice Statistics Bureau Brief, 66, 1.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Halstead, I., Opeskin, B., Parr, N. (2017). Demographic Projections of Demand for Criminal Court Services Across New South Wales, Australia. In: Swanson, D. (eds) The Frontiers of Applied Demography. Applied Demography Series, vol 9. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43329-5_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43329-5_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-43327-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-43329-5
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)