An evaluation of Local Coordinated Multiagency (LCM) offender management

  • Date published: 01 Jun 2023
  • Author: Sara Rahman
  • Publication series: Crime and justice bulletin
  • Subject: Reoffending
Supporting documents

Summary

Background

LCM is a multiagency approach to offender management where the Department of Communities and Justice, the NSW Police Force and NSW Health work in partnership to provide tailored case management and wraparound support to offenders under Community Corrections supervision. This support may include referrals to housing services, disability services, health and mental health services, drug and alcohol services, victim services, and relationship services in addition to any rehabilitation programs.

We study whether LCM is associated with changes in four outcomes: any reoffending, serious drug, violent, and property reoffending, domestic violence reoffending, and return to custody, each within 12 months of referral.
To do this, we compare reoffending rates of LCM offenders with reoffending rates of a matched control group.

We supplemented this analysis with an event study analysis comparing offending before and after referral to LCM versus a matched group with similar community order start dates.

Key findings

Figure 1 shows our estimates of the change in the likelihood of reoffending and returning to custody associated with LCM. We find that LCM is not associated with any significant changes in reoffending, serious drug, violent or property reoffending, or domestic violence reoffending when compared with a matched control group. However, LCM offenders are 10 p.p. more likely to return to custody even when compared to a matched group with similar criminal histories, index offences, and community orders. We find that there is no significant difference between LCM offenders and matched offenders on any measure of reoffending in our supplementary event study analysis.

Conclusion

LCM is not associated with a significant reduction in reoffending and may be associated with higher return to custody rates. However, these results are limited by our inability to identify a comparison group of offenders who have multiagency needs.
Figure 1. Percentage point change in the likelihood of recidivism and return to custody within 12 months of referral for LCM offenders
Figure 1. Percentage point change in the likelihood of recidivism and return to custody within 12 months of referral for LCM offenders
Last updated:

06 Aug 2024