Australia’s youth justice crackdown under fire as experts call for focus on unmet needs

Underfunded support networks are offering young offenders minimal alternatives to crime, as Australia continues to grapple for solutions to a perceived youth justice crisis.

The National Children’s Commissioner said the tough-on-crime approach to child offenders across various jurisdictions misunderstood the problems, because it was a “symptom of underlying issues and unmet needs”.

Recent law changes in Queensland mean kids as young as 10 face adult jail time for some offences, while many states and territories have tightened bail laws after public outcry.

Commissioner Anne Hollonds said the justice system could not prevent youth crime, and only addressing unmet needs could.

“The upstream systems meant to help children and their families, such as health, education and social services, are fragmented, piecemeal and uncoordinated, described by some as mid-last century in their design and not fit-for-purpose,” she told a crime and justice conference on Tuesday.

“Making justice system responses harsher and more punitive shows a misunderstanding of the nature of the problems we are trying to solve.”

NSW Children’s Court president Ellen Skinner told the conference that young people had lost a previously attached sense of shame relating to criminality.

“The criminal justice system was set up to humiliate people who stepped outside our social contracts, but right now, there are kids who are getting some kudos for doing that, and that makes it really hard to moderate their behaviour,” she said.

“Being ‘good’ brings them nothing, they are not looking at being able to own their own house or go on holidays or drive a fast car.

“If being good doesn’t offer them anything, then they’re going to do something else, and we’re going to have to rework the terms of that social contract.”

NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research executive director Jackie Fitzgerald said media-driven “hysteria” about youth crime was somewhat inaccurate, given figures had dropped heavily across the past 15 years.

Panellists agreed initiatives, including free community sport and other cultural events, were a “no-brainer” for helping children develop a sense of belonging within a community.

Queensland’s parliament has passed “adult crime, adult time”, which subjects young offenders can now face lengthy adult sentences for attempted murder, rape, sexual assault, torture and kidnapping.

NSW is reviewing ‘doli incapax’, the legal presumption that children between the ages of 10 and 14 do not sufficiently understand the difference between right and wrong to be held criminally responsible.