Bourke is a town of 3000 people in the North West of New South Wales about, 800km from Sydney. Bourke has an issue with high incarceration rates amongst the youth. This model looks into how the crime rates amongst the Youth change over time depending on three key variables.
Variables
The three variables are as follows
Support Network: This relates to relationship with family, other community members and school attendance.
Community Involvement: This relates to the community development programs such as sporting clubs and other social clubs.
Police Presence: This relates to the presence of police in the community such as the number of patrol cars and also the degree the police are involved in community relations
The scale for the variables is as follows that
1= No Support Network, Community Involvement or Police Presence
5= A Supportive network is present, Involvement within the community is good or there is suitable police presence
10: Incredibly positive Supportive network, very active with community programs and police presence is great.
Assumptions
-In this model we assume that Youth will be imprisoned for 6 months and released back into the community.
-That from the youth that commit Petty Crimes 25% will go on to be convicted and go to jail while the reminder 75% will become Youth at Risks once again.
Notes
-The observations for this model are heavily dependant on the level of each variable. Generally it has been observed that the higher the level of the variables the less we see Youth in the Bourke Community misbehaving.
-It has been observed that if Bourke is to have at least each variable at a level of 7 and above the number of behaving Bourke Youth will increase while Youth at Risk, Petty Crimes and Jailed Youth will decrease.
Interrelations
Police Presence
The level of police presence will influence the Number of youth at risk, petty crime levels,number of youth that are jailed and also the likely hood youth at risk are to change their attitude and become positive members of the community.
Support Network and Community Involvement
A like to police presence the higher the level for these variables the less the numbers for Youth at Risk, Petty Crime, Jailed will be observed. In addition these variables will have a big impact on the likely hood of a previously jailed youth re-offending.