Dr Sam Boyle1
1Australian Centre For Health Law Research, School Of Law, Queensland University Of Technology
Reoffending is a major policy challenge in relation to young people involved in the justice system. Various factors have been shown to predict reoffending, such as poor housing, school disengagement, poor family relationships, and poor cultural connectedness. Recent research has shown that poor health also has an important role in predicting reoffending, both in its own right, but also as an initial cause of other known predictors of offending, such as those listed above. This precipitative relationship between poor health and predictors of reoffending coheres with the experiences of case workers of the Queensland’s Department of Youth Justice. Therefore, in order to help reduce the risk of reoffending, the Department introduced the ‘Navigate Your Health’ program. Under the program, a nurse navigator is provided to all young people who have committed a crime, and have been given a non-custodial sentence. The nurse navigators provide health assessment, and facilitation and coordination of necessary health care. The novel aim of the Navigate Your Health program is to reduce the risk of reoffending by improving young people’s health. This paper reports on the preliminary results of the program. It shows that the provision of nurse navigators has led to improvements in the participants’ health and wellbeing. Importantly, it has also led to improvements in other known predictors of reoffending for which direct assistance was not given in the program. These results suggests that improving health of young people who offend may reduce the risk of reoffending in the longer term. Further research is required, but this may represent an important step in the understanding of how reoffending may be reduced among youth offenders.
Biography:
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