Young people who pass through youth justice die at six times the rate of their peers
New research finds the high death rate among justice-involved young people is preventable if we recognise youth justice is public health issue, not just a criminal justice one
Published 21 August 2026
Conversations about the youth justice system typically focus on offending and punishment.
In Australia, this has fuelled increasingly populist and punitive youth justice policies like Queensland's Adult Crime, Adult time policy or Victoria’s Adult Time for Violent Crime legislation.
Although almost every young person who is incarcerated in Australia is released back into the community, surprisingly little attention is paid to their health and wellbeing after they leave custody.
This is important because children and adolescents who experience youth detention shoulder a disproportionate burden of mental and physical health problems when compared with peers who have not been detained.
Most of these young people also experience complex social disadvantage that compounds their health challenges, and both factors are associated with an increased risk of premature death.
When we link youth justice and health system records, the data paint a concerning picture.
Our earlier Queensland study found that children with any exposure to the youth justice system died at a rate more than four times that of their peers, with the risk of death highest for those who had been detained.
But what about the rest of Australia? Are the patterns similar in other jurisdictions, and in other countries?
To answer this question we conducted the first global systematic review of studies on mortality after contact with the youth justice system (including both youth detention and community-based supervision), looking at young people who had contact with the justice system before the age of 20.
Among 48,195 young people from studies in Australia, Estonia, Scotland and the United States, the findings were strikingly similar to those from our research in Queensland.
Young people with experience of the youth justice system died at a rate more than six times that of young people in the general population.
This needs to change.
Causes of death
Our earlier work in Victoria found that, among a representative sample of justice-involved young people, two-thirds had a substance-use disorder and almost one in five had self-harmed in the past six months.
A study in South Australian youth detention found that 77 per cent had four or more adverse childhood experiences, which can include things like physical abuse, emotional abuse and family violence.
Levels of adversity like this are associated with a substantially increased risk of chronic disease and premature death.
And our latest review showed consistent findings – young people with a history of youth justice contact were at significantly increased risk of death due to preventable causes like drug overdose, suicide and homicide.
Health & Medicine
Too many people die after leaving prison
Importantly, it also showed that people with a youth justice experience face an increased risk of death from accidental injury, communicable diseases like HIV and pneumonia, and non-communicable diseases like cancer.
These unmet health and social needs – and the associated risk of death – persist for years after contact with the youth justice system.
And important differences in risk of premature death emerged when we compared males and females.
While the overall rate of death for justice-involved males is higher than for justice-involved females, when compared to the general population, females have a greater increase in risk of death after an experience with youth justice.
For justice-involved males, the rate of death was six times higher than among males in the general population of the same age.
Using the same comparison for justice-involved females, their rate of death from any cause was 12 times higher.
Girls and young women make up almost one in five of those who pass through youth detention each year.
Our findings are a stark reminder that young women must not be overlooked or de-prioritised in the design and delivery of health and social supports – both in and after youth detention.
Local evidence matters
Homicide is an important, preventable cause of death for justice-involved young people.
But most of the evidence on this comes from a cohort in Chicago during a period of exceptionally high levels of homicide in the 1990s.
One particular study followed 1829 young people for up to 16 years after release from youth detention in Chicago and identified 111 deaths, 75 of which were due to homicide (68 due to gun homicide).
While Australia currently has much stricter gun control, these high rates of gun homicide are a reminder of the importance of targeted violence prevention responses in that context.
The findings from our review provide the best global estimate of mortality after youth justice contact.
But when it comes to effective policy responses, local and contemporary evidence is essential.
A regrettable opportunity
Youth justice settings are where many young people with complex needs encounter health and social services for the first time.
Contact with the system could therefore be thought of as a ‘regrettable opportunity’ to identify and respond to unmet health needs.
However, the high rates of premature death in our review suggest that the health and social needs of these young people often remain unmet after their (usually brief) contact with the youth justice system ends.
The care available to them within the system, which can include primary care, mental health care, alcohol and other drug treatment, and social support, must be continued after they leave detention.
Ensuring that care is age-appropriate, trauma-informed, gender-responsive, culturally safe and coordinated will go a long way towards preventing deaths in these vulnerable young people.
If we are to successfully prevent tragic and untimely deaths among these young people, we need to recognise that youth justice is more than a criminal justice issue. It is also a public health issue.
Ignoring this reality comes at a significant human cost for the young people in our communities who need our support the most.
This study was published in a special issue of Social Science and Medicine, on the topic of incarceration and global health equity.