The Net-Widening Effect of AID Panels and Screening Panels in the South Australian Juvenile Justice System
| Author | Joy Wundersitz |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486589202500202 |
| Published date | 01 July 1992 |
| Date | 01 July 1992 |
AUST
&NZ
JOURNAL
OF
CRIMINOLOGY
(July 1992) 25 (115-134)
THE
NET-WIDENING
EFFECT
OF AID PANELS AND
SCREENING PANELS
IN
THE
SOUTH AUSTRALIAN
JUVENILE
JUSTICE
SYSTEM
Joy Wundersitz*
115
Motivated by growing doubts about the juvenile court's ability to deal effectively with young
offenders, countries such as the United States and Australia have established informal treatment
programs ostensibly designed to divert youths from formal court prosecution. Such programs,
however, have been criticised on thegrounds that, rather than fulfilling a diversionaryfunction, they
have widened the net
of
social control. By focusing on the two-tiered Panel system currently in
operation in South Australia, this articlepresents inferential evidence that net-widening did occur
after the introduction firstly,
of
Aid
Panels in 1972 and secondly,
of
Screening Panels in 1979.
However, in both instances, this net-widening was restricted to a relativelyshort time period, after
which the numbers
of
youths selectedfor processing by the juvenile justice system stabilised.
Introduction
During the 1960s there was growing acknowledgement, especially in the United
States, that the formal treatment of young offenders by juvenile courts had proved
less than satisfactory. Concern over
the
justice system's apparent ineffectiveness in
curbing the escalating juvenile crime rate (Dunford, 1977: 335), coupled with the
criticism of labelling theorists
that
formal court processing
had
a negative,
stigmatising effect on youthful offenders, prompted the 1967 President's
Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice to recommend
the adoption of 'alternative waysof treating juveniles' (1967: 279). This signalled the
beginning of a large scale effort in
the
United States to develop various forms of
informal, community-based treatment options for young offenders which generally
went under the heading of 'diversion' programs.
By the early 1970s hundreds of such programs had sprung up (Palmer and Lewis,
1980:209), and in their wake came a plethora of evaluative studies, many of which
proved to be highly critical. Despite some evidence to the contrary (see eg, Baron et
al, 1973; Duxbury, 1973; Klein, 1975; Quay and Love, 1977) numerous researchers
concluded that these mechanisms were ineffective in lowering recidivism rates
(Lincoln, 1976; Lundman, 1976; Elliott et aI, 1978); that they were gender-biased
(Alder, 1984);Alder and Polk, 1982); that they often failed to protect the legal rights
of the child (Decker, 1985); that participation was achieved through coercion rather
than voluntarily (Blomberg, 1983: 27); and that, because they were highly
discretionary and were not subject to public scrutiny, they increased the likelihood
of arbitrary and unjust decision-making (Nejelski, 1976; Austin and Krisberg, 1981;
Decker, 1985).
But perhaps the most important criticism levelled against these informal
procedures, and the one with which this present study is concerned, is that they
widened the net of social control. In
other
words, rather than dealing with young
offenders who would otherwise have been processed through the courts, they
brought into the official justice system those children who would previously have
remained outside of it (Seymour, 1988: 233).
*MA, Dip Ed, Research Associate, Geography Department, University of Adelaide.
116 JWUNDERSITZ (1992) 25
ANZJ
Crim
The
empirical evidence of diversion's net-widening effects has grown considerably
over the years (Blomberg, 1983: 29). To cite just a few of the studies undertaken in
the
United States, Bohnstedt's (1978) assessment of 11 Californian diversion
programs revealed
that
49% of the clients were subjected to more processing than
they would have experienced had the projects not
been
in place. A follow-up report
(Palmer and Lewis, 1980) indicated that of these 49% of cases, 28% were referred
by non-justice agencies such as parents and schools, while
the
remaining 21%were
justice system referrals who previously would have
been
either informally cautioned
by police or had their cases dismissed at the point of probation intake. Blomberg's
(1977) study of another Californian diversion program found that, because of the
program emphasised family intervention, a
number
of siblings and parents were
referred to it. He therefore concluded that 'new clients previously
not
considered for
control are now judged suitable for diversion' (p 281). More recently, Decker's
(1985) study of a diversion program for status offenders in St Louis found
that
the
establishment of this program coincided with an increase in referrals not only for
status offences
but
for all categories of offending behaviour.
There is, then, ample evidence to indicate
that
the
introduction of these informal
treatment options, rather than diverting young offenders from formal justice
processing, actually had the opposite effect. As Austin and Krisberg (1981: 165)
express it, they resulted in wider, stronger and different nets.
Informal Processing in Australia
In Australia, as in the United States, there has been aclear shift towards the
establishment of informal procedures for dealingwith young offenders over the past
two or three decades. And, as in the United States, they have generally been
characterised as diversionary mechanisms. However, as Alder
and
Polk (1985: 279)
note, the nature of diversion in this country is different from
that
common in the
United States. Whereas America preferred diversion to welfare agencies, Australia
favoured diversionfrom formal prosecution. Thus, some States -notably Victoria
and
Queensland -chose to formalise the long-standing practice of unofficial police
cautioning, while Western Australia and South Australia
opted
for a system of
Panels staffed by a senior police officer and a social worker. In Western Australia,
Children's (Suspended Proceedings) Panels commenced operation in August 1964,
while in South Australia a somewhat comparable but less restrictive system of
Juvenile Aid Panels was established in 1972.
Further
refinement to this latter system
occurred in 1979with
the
introduction of Screening Panels.
Despite the fact that these informal processing mechanisms have now been in
operation for a number of decades, few attempts have been
made
to evaluate their
potential net-widening effect. Even in South Australia, where considerable attention
has been focused on juvenile justice since the mid-1960s, the issue has not
been
the
subject of rigorous analysis.
The
possibility that the introduction of Children's Aid Panels in South Australia
widened the
net
of social control was first raised by Sarri and Bradley (1980). Their
research indicated
that
during the first 5 years of operation of these Panels (ie July
1972 to June 1977), the total volume of juveniles processed by
the
justice system
increased by 36%, while the estimated increase for the youth population as a whole
was only 9% (p 51). They concluded with
the
warning
that
'Far
too often systems
such as the panels not only function as alternatives, as their designers intended, but
also widen the range of control, bringing into
the
system youths whose behaviour
would otherwise have
been
ignored' (p 62).
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