Youth Justice Charge file cluster

DSS specific information:

The person identifier is a jurisdictionally-specific code that uniquely identifies a young person within the State and Territory youth justice agency responsible for the young person. 

A State or Territory identifier should be the first character of the person identifier according to the following:

1 New South Wales
 
2 Victoria
 
3 Queensland
 
4 South Australia
 
5 Western Australia
 
6 Tasmania
 
7 Northern Territory
 
8 Australian Capital Territory
 
9 Other territories (e.g. Christmas Island).

DSS specific information:

The charge identifier allows for a single charge to be mapped to multiple orders. For example, a young person is charged with a particular offence and is placed on supervised bail. At the next court appearance in relation to this charge, they are remanded into custody. At a later date, an unrelated charge results in the young person being placed on supervised bail. 

In the table below, the charge identifier shows that the first two records relate to the same offence, but do not relate to the third record, which has the same charge type but a different order identifier.

DSS specific information:

For the purposes of the YJ DSS, this unique identifier is retained across collection periods. The identifier is assigned by the State or Territory youth justice department.

This item uniquely identifies each supervised (unsentenced) order. The order identifier links the charge record with an order in the Order file of the YJ NMDS. Each unsentenced supervised order in the Order file should have one or more records in the charge file.

Conditional obligation:

Conditional on a charge resulting in a conviction. If charges cannot be linked with offences, do not supply data for this item.

DSS specific information:

The offence identifier (charge file) allows for a charge to be linked with the resulting offence. If charges cannot be linked with offences, do not supply data for this item.

For example, following their first court appearance, a young person is placed on remand for a particular offence (order ID 333). At their second court appearance, they are released on supervised bail (order ID 334). At the third court appearance, the young person is sentenced to a supervised order in relation to the charge. The resulting order is order ID 6 in the order file.

The first record shows that the person was charged with an offence and that the related order is order ID333. The offence ID field is blank because for this order, the charge did not result in a conviction. The second record shows that the charge ID is the same as the first record and so the charge is the same. It requires a new record because the order ID is different. At the end of this order, the charge resulted in a conviction, so the offence ID field contains ID of the corresponding offence record.

If the offence identifier matches the offence identifier of another record for the same person identifier, the offence types must be the same.

Null values

Leave the field blank if:

• The offence identifier is unknown

• The offence identifier is not applicable.

DSS specific information:

This item is collected for the suburb/town/locality name of the court in which the young person appeared when placed on the order relating to the charge. For police-referred detention, where the young person did not appear in court when being placed on the order, the court location should be reported as ‘Not applicable’.

Suburb and postcode information

From July 2020, an all-inclusive list of postcodes and suburbs will be used to check postcodes in the YJ NMDS. This list consists of unique postcodes and suburbs across all current and historical versions of postcode data purchased by the AIHW.

For the most current list of valid postcodes and suburbs, go to http://www.postconnect.com.au/postcode-data.