New South Wales Criminal Justice System Survey 2007

A survey of public confidence in the NSW criminal justice system undertaken by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research and the NSW Sentencing Council.The study, has three distinct aims: to assess levels of public confidence in various aspects of the NSW criminal justice system; to assess the degree to which members of the NSW public are mistaken about crime and criminal justice outcomes; to determine what marginal contribution greater knowledge about crime and criminal justice makes towards levels of confidence in the justice system (after adjusting for important sociodemographic characteristics). Participants comprised a random sample of 2002 members of the NSW public who were interviewed in late August 2007 via Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI). Only English-speaking people aged 18 years or older were eligible to take part in the study. No attempt was made to contact hard-to-reach populations, such as institutionalised or homeless people. While the nominal response rate was quite low (15,914 people refused, giving a nominal response rate of 11.2%), quota sampling was employed to ensure that the sample was representative of the NSW population in terms of age, sex and residential location. The results suggest that members of the NSW public have high levels of confidence in the fair and respectful treatment of offenders but lower levels of confidence in the adequacy of sentencing, the ability of the justice system to bring offenders to justice and meet the needs of victims and in the efficiency of the justice system. Levels of knowledge about crime and justice would appear to exert a very large independent effect on levels of confidence in these aspects of the justice system.