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This paper provides an analysis of Australia's legal provisions and policies regarding truancy. We examine how low frequency truants feature in Australia's truancy law and policy and highlight similarities and differences in the cultural-legal context between Australian states and territories. Similarities include requirements to attend school from about six to 17 years of age and the legal culpability of (predominantly) the parents for children's non-attendance. Differences include little consistency in the threshold at which schools in different Australian states and territories are required to intervene once truancy has been identified and disparities in prosecutions and fines. We conclude that harmonising truancy laws in Australia is likely to increase parental understanding and thereby compliance with school attendance laws.

The act of truancy is linked to numerous negative lifelong social and economic harms. Fostering positive intentions towards school and school attendance may mitigate these harms. This paper applies the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) to evaluate the effects the Ability School Engagement Program (ASEP) trial had on the behavioural intentions of truanting youths. The trial was evaluated under randomised control conditions. The ASEP intervention used Family Group Conferences including the presence of a police officer, teacher, the student and their guardian(s) and a trained facilitator to communicate and gain willing compliance from the student with truancy laws. Quantitative analyses of self-report survey data, collected from 102 students 12-weeks after random allocation to either participate in the conference or not, investigates the applicability of the TPB in this context. Results indicate that behavioural intentions to attend school were positively influenced by the ASEP condition. Students' behavioural intentions were predominantly influenced by their attitudes and secondarily by their subjective norms. Split sample regressions indicated the TPB model had less predictive ability in determining behavioural intentions in the experimental group than in the control group. The implications of this are discussed. The results of this paper provide a basis on which more research into understanding which ASEP mechanisms influenced the students' behavioural intentions can be conducted., Author(s): Kelsy Luengen [sup.1] , Lorraine Mazerolle [sup.1] , Emma Antrobus [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.1003.2, 0000 0000 9320 7537, School of Social Science, University Of Queensland, , St Lucia, [...]

Objectives: Social disorganization states that neighborhood social ties and shared expectations for informal social control are necessary for the exercise of informal social control actions. Yet this association is largely assumed rather than empirically examined in the literature. This paper examines the relationship between neighborhood social ties, shared expectations for informal social control and actual parochial and public informal social control actions taken by residents in response to big neighborhood problems. Methods: Using multi-level logistic regression models, we integrate Australian Bureau of Statistics census data with the Australian Community Capacity Study survey data of 1310 residents reporting 2614 significant neighborhood problems across 148 neighborhoods to examine specific informal social control actions taken by residents when faced with neighborhood problems. Results: We do not find a relationship between shared expectations for informal social control and residents’ informal social control actions. Individual social ties, however, do lead to an increase in informal social control actions in response to ‘big’ neighborhood problems. Residents with strong ties are more likely to engage in public and parochial informal social control actions than those individuals who lack social ties. Yet individuals living in neighborhoods with high levels of social ties are only moderately more likely to engage in parochial informal social control action than those living in areas where these ties are not present. Shared expectations for informal social control are not associated with the likelihood that residents engage in informal social control actions when faced with a significant neighborhood problem. Conclusion: Neighborhood social ties and shared expectations for informal social control are not unilaterally necessary for the exercise of informal social control actions. Our results challenge contemporary articulations of social disorganization theory that assume that the availability of neighborhood social ties or expectations for action are associated with residents actually doing something to exercise of informal social control.

Research shows that residents report high levels of disorder in places with greater concentrations of minorities even after controlling for objective indicators of crime or disorder. Less understood, however, are the mechanisms that explain this relationship. Drawing on a survey of nearly 10,000 residents nested within 297 neighborhoods across two cities, we use a multiple indicators-multiple causes model to examine the cues that lead individuals to distort the presence of minorities in neighborhoods. We then employ multilevel models to test whether these distortions influence perceptions of disorder. Furthermore, we assess whether living in a socially cohesive neighborhood mediates and/or moderates the relationship between "seeing" minorities and perceiving disorder. We find that when residents overestimate the proportion of minorities living in their neighborhood, perceptions of disorder are heightened. Yet social cohesion moderates and partially mediates this relationship: Residents living in socially cohesive neighborhoods not only report less disorder than those living in less cohesive communities, but also they "see" fewer minorities when compared with residents living in less socially cohesive neighborhoods. These results suggest that social cohesion is an important mechanism for explaining how residents internalize the presence of minorities in their neighborhoods and how this then leads to perceived neighborhood disorder. © 2013 American Society of Criminology.

Research shows that residents report high levels of disorder in places with greater concentrations of minorities even after controlling for objective indicators of crime or disorder. Less understood, however, are the mechanisms that explain this relationship. Drawing on a survey of nearly 10,000 residents nested within 297 neighborhoods across two cities, we use a multiple indicators multiple causes model to examine the cues that lead individuals to distort the presence of minorities in neighborhoods. We then employ multi-level models to assess how these distortions influence perceptions of disorder. Further, we assess if living in a socially cohesive neighborhood mediates and/or moderates the relationship between “seeing” minorities and perceiving disorder. We find that when residents overestimate the proportion of minorities living in their neighborhood, perceptions of disorder are heightened. Yet social cohesion moderates and partially mediates this relationship: residents living in socially cohesive neighborhoods not only report less disorder than those living in less cohesive communities; they “see” fewer minorities when compared to residents living in less socially cohesive neighborhoods. These results suggest that social cohesion is an important mechanism for explaining how residents internalize the presence of minorities in their neighborhoods and how this then leads to perceived neighborhood disorder.