Graduate School Career Development Framework

Queensland Department of Youth Justice and Victim Support Placement Opportunities

The Queensland Department of Youth Justice and Victim Support is responsible for enacting the Queensland Government’s vision for keeping communities safe by addressing the drivers of youth crime. The Youth Justice Strategic Plan 2023–2027 outlines strategies to reduce youth offending and reoffending by holding young people accountable and ensuring youth justice supervision enhances social, economic, civic participation, and cultural connection. The plan also addresses the overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth in the justice system and highlights our department's contribution to Queensland Government objectives.

Together with UQ’s Graduate School, the Queensland Department of Youth Justice offers opportunities for HDR placements where current HDR candidates can apply and develop their research skills in a real-world context. The placements are facilitated by the Performance Reporting and Analytics and Research & Evaluation teams within Youth Justice. These teams’ portfolio of work involves managing, analysing and reporting on the Department’s vast administrative data holdings; fostering innovation in data analytics to better understand and forecast youth crime; and help evaluate the success of youth-justice-related programs and initiatives.

HDR candidates from all UQ schools and faculties and from all disciplinary backgrounds are welcome to apply for the HDR Placements. However, we are particularly interested in working with candidates who possess—or want to develop—their skills in one or more of the following areas:

  • The capacity to synthesise existing academic knowledge in the broad areas of criminology, youth crime, and all social issues associated with youth crime, and integrate it with existing or prospective policies.
  • The ability to manipulate, clean and analyse quantitative data using appropriate methods and statistical software (Excel, Stata, R, SPSS, Python, Power BI, etc.).
  • The ability to manipulate, clean and analyse qualitative data using appropriate methods and relevant software (Excel, NVIVO, etc.).
  • An understanding of legal principles and/or Australian and Queensland legislation.
  • The ability to contribute to the drafting, editing and preparation of research and policy outputs for different audiences, including tables, figures, references and infographics.

Identifying a Project

The Queensland Department of Youth Justice welcomes specific project proposals from candidates, but are also interested in co-developing project ideas with prospective candidates. Example projects may include, but are not limited to:

  • Undertaking a desktop review of academic literature on the use of predictive modelling tools in government decision-making (with particular application to crime and youth crime) and summarising the results into a brief report to non-technical audiences.
  • Undertaking a desktop review of academic literature on agency touchpoints for young people involved in the Youth Justice system—including interactions with health, housing, police and other Government agencies—and summarising the results into a brief report to non-technical audiences.
  • Assisting in the evaluation of ongoing government programs aimed at preventing and/or reducing youth offending, including contributions to their frameworks, literature reviews, methodologies and analytic components.
  • Supporting the qualitative-analysis components of ongoing program evaluations—for example, through drafting focus-group and interview guides, and/or undertaking thematic analyses of the resulting or similar, existing data.
  • Identifying and implementing a robust approach to connecting section codes of the Youth Justice Act 1992 to real-time data on the offences committed by young people in Queensland.
  • Undertaking a statistical analysis of differences in offence coding across established and forthcoming iterations of the Australian and New Zealand Standard Offence Classification (ANZSOC) and the Queensland version of it.
  • Developing an interactive dashboard using appropriate software (e.g., Power BI) to make the contents of existing Excel-based reports more user friendly.
  • Preparing syntax code using appropriate software (e.g., Stata) to systematically clean and prepare for analysis departmental data holdings, such as the annual Youth Justice Census.

Placement details

Start date: Flexible (depending on the project).

Total days: 60 working days (full-time or part-time, with flexible hours).

Location: Department of Youth Justice, 150 Mary Street, Brisbane 4000 (with the possibility of some remote work).

If you are interested in this placement opportunity, please contact Dr Brenton McNally, Director, Performance Reporting and Analytics – Youth Justice, at Brenton.McNally@cyjma.qld.gov.au, attaching your resume and a brief cover letter outlining your interest in applying.

This placement is unpaid, but you might be eligible to apply for one of the Graduate School Scholarships.

After co-developing the project proposal and completing the project brief with the Department, you will need to formally submit the HDR placement application through my.UQ. Please visit the placements website for guidance, specifically from "Organise your Placement" section: https://cdf.graduate-school.uq.edu.au/hdr-placements and contact Graduate school through their email graduateschool@uq.edu.au if you need assistance submitting your application.