The Family Group Conference (FGC) process seeks to hold children and young people accountable for their offending, while also encouraging them to change their behaviour and not reoffend. FGCs are the cornerstone of the youth justice system in New Zealand. However, there is a lack of evidence in New Zealand as to whether youth justice FGCs are effective at reducing or stopping reoffending.

This report describes the profile and patterns of reoffending observed for nearly 6,800 participants of youth justice FGCs held in the 2011 and 2012 calendar years. Two FGC cohorts were examined:

• 3,936 intention-to-charge (ITC) FGCs
• 2,828 court-ordered FGCs.

Caution must be taken in interpreting reoffending outcomes as they are not always a measure of the effectiveness of an intervention alone. For example, a person may reoffend less often simply due to the fact that they were caught by the Police and made to account for their actions, regardless of the particular intervention applied. Measuring the relative effectiveness of the FGC cohorts would require a robust statistical approach such as a matched comparison analysis. This was not in scope for this analysis.

Key findings
Profile of youth justice FGC participants in 2011 and 2012

• Around eight out of every 10 attendees of FGCs were male, with the figure being slightly lower for ITC FGCs than court-ordered FGCs.
• Just over half of FGC participants were identified as Māori and around one-third were European.
• Around 70% of all youth justice FGC participants are 15- or 16-years-old when the FGCs were held, with the average age being just under 16 years. While they were aged 16 years or younger when they offended, around one in every 10 of the FGC participants were aged 17 years or older at the time the FGC was held.

An escalation in offending prior to the FGCs was curtailed for both cohorts

• For both cohorts, an escalation in the frequency and seriousness of offending by young people prior to the FGCs was followed by a reduction in both measures after the FGCs.
• The vast majority of the decrease in the number of offences after both of the FGC cohorts was due to large drops in the three most common offence divisions: theft-related, burglary and property damage.

Participants of ITC FGCs generally had more positive reoffending outcomes than those with court-ordered FGCs, though this could be expected

• Research has shown that prior offending is generally a good predictor of future offending. For example, it could be expected that those with less extensive offending histories would be less likely to reoffend than those with extensive offending histories. This analysis showed that prior to the FGCs, participants of ITC FGCs had committed fewer offences and also less serious offences, on average than participants of court-ordered FGCs. It could therefore be expected that reoffending outcomes for ITC FGCs would be more positive than those seen for court-ordered FGCs.
• Thirty percent of participants of court-ordered FGCs did not reoffend, whereas the figure was higher at 36% for ITC FGCs. 
• The proportion of young people who reduced the frequency and/or seriousness of their offending was similar for both FGC cohorts at around 70%. In contrast, a little over 20% of participants of both FGC cohorts increased the frequency and/or seriousness of their offending after the FGCs.
• Participants of court ordered FGCs (12%) were much more likely to receive a custodial sentence in the 12 months after the FGCs compared with ITC FGC participants (4%).

Overall outcomes 24 months after the FGCs held in 2011

• The 24-month reoffending outcomes for the participants of FGCs held in 2011 were examined in brief. Comparable figures were not yet available for FGCs held in 2012.
• The proportion of court-ordered FGC participants who did not reoffend within 24 months of the FGCs being held in 2011 was 18%, while the figure for ITC FGCs was higher at 23%.
• Comparing the 24-month period after the FGCs held in 2011 to the same period prior, at least six out of every 10 young people reduced the frequency and/or seriousness of their offending for both FGC cohorts.
• A much higher proportion of young people received a custodial sentence in the following 24 months for court-ordered FGCs (19%) than ITC FGCs (8%)

Further research
A key youth justice Principle in the CYP&F Act is that “unless the public interest requires otherwise, criminal proceedings should not be instituted against a child or young person if there is an alternative means of dealing with the matter”. We are therefore interested in identifying whether there are groups of young people being dealt with by the Youth Court who could achieve similar or better reoffending outcomes from ITC FGCs, as the Principle would be better met by not having the young person appearing in court. The feasibility of such an analysis would need to be investigated.