The Wire

In the United Kingdom, 23 percent of adults and 38 percent of their children came from a foster-care or institutional background. In the American states of Illinois, Connecticut and California, 75 per cent of prison inmates come from similar backgrounds. It’s a disturbing trend that new research has revealed also exists in Australia. A new report called “care leaver over-representation in the NSW prison population”, has revealed a high correlation between care leavers and criminal offenders in the NSW prison population. The definition of care leaver includes those raised in foster homes, orphanages and other state institutions. Katherine McFarlence is a policy officer with the NSW attorney generals department. She’s been working to identify the implications of the overrepresentation of care leavers in the NSW prison population. She presented the findings at a forum in Sydney and pointed the way towards a need to tackle the alarming statistics.