The prevalence of youth offending has exhibited unprecedented declines in the last two decades across a large number of Western countries, including the U.S., U.K., a number of European countries and Australia. The modest body of international research examining the causes of the youth crime decline has indicated a number of contributory factors, including changes to youth routine activities which have reduced young peoples’ exposure to high-risk settings for offending (Svensson & Oberwittler, 2021; Van der Laan et al., 2021), and increased property securitization which has reduced opportunistic property crime (Farrell et al., 2015). More recent research has also suggested a role for policing responses to young people, with a number of studies suggesting an association between reductions in aggressive crime control responses and increases in diversion, and declines in youth offending (McVie & McAra,2019; Neil & Sampson, 2021), however the empirical evidence for this remains limited. This seminar will present analysis examining the nature of the youth crime decline in Australia, including the emergence of polarised youth offending trends in recent years, characterized by growth in high frequency and high harm youth offending among smaller cohorts of young people. Potential drivers of these trends in the Australian context, and the nature of the young people and communities who have benefited from the decline, and those who have been left behind, will be explored.

Dr Molly McCarthy is an ARC DECRA Senior Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute, and leads research in two key areas – assessing the impacts of policing approaches and examining contexts and drivers of youth offending behaviour. She was awarded an ARC DECRA fellowship to conduct the research project ‘Contemporary social and environmental risks for youth offending’ (2024-2026). This project will explore contemporary social contexts for adolescent development and how this may be influencing polarised youth offending trends among different cohorts of young people.

This seminar will be held in-person at Burwood (C2.05.01), but you can also join us via Zoom.

*Please feel free to share the event details with those who may want to attend*

If attending in-person, please RSVP to adi-events@deakin.edu.au

If attending via Zoom, please register in advance here: https://deakin.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZctfuysrjMsGN1NiSk_GWJK53L7ACHxTFf9