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Current research demonstrates relationships between child abuse and neglect, homelessness and criminal activity. This report presents key findings from analysis of a data set linking three community-sector data collections: Supported Accommodation Assistance Program (SAAP), juvenile justice supervision, and child protection notifications and substantiations in Victoria and Tasmania. While this project demonstrated that linking these collections is both feasible and worthwhile, the results are limited by data availability (this project used 3 years of SAAP data, 10 years of juvenile justice data, 18 years of Victorian child protection data and 3 years of Tasmanian child protection data). The accumulation of data over multiple years for all sectors would enable the flows between services over the long term to be identified, but despite the data limitations, the results highlight the possibilities for data linkage in these sectors although caution must be used in generalising these findings. Findings include: (1) People with involvement in one of the three sectors are more likely to be involved in another of the sectors than the general population; (2) Young people with a child protection history enter juvenile justice supervision at a younger age; and (3) Young people, particularly young women, completing a detention sentence are at greater risk of homelessness. Cohorts for analysis are appended. A list of abbreviations is included. (Contains 26 figures and 3 tables.)

In Australia, the state and territory governments are responsible for dealing with young people who are involved in crime. One major aspect of the juvenile justice system is the supervision of children and young people who have committed or are alleged to have committed an offence. This report presents information on the young people under juvenile justice supervision, both in detention and under community-based supervision, and the characteristics of their supervision. There are eight chapters in this report. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the report. Chapter 2 provides background information to the juvenile justice supervision system and the young people who are under juvenile justice supervision. Chapter 3 details the data and methods used in the report. Chapters 4 and 5 examine the characteristics of the young people under juvenile justice supervision and the supervision they experience. Chapter 6 contains further information on community-based supervision, while Chapter 7 focuses on detention. Chapter 8 summarises key information for each state and territory. Appended are: (1) State and territory juvenile justice systems, programs and services; and (2) Population data. (Contains 143 figures and 33 tables.) [Funding for this paper was provided by the Australasian Juvenile Justice Administrators.]