Tackling the drivers of crime is a more effective way to create safer communities than expanding youth detention at Malmsbury, according to the Commission for Children and Young People.
‘Containing ever more children in youth detention and excluding them from the connections vital to their wellbeing and development might appear to offer a short-term fix for youth crime, but it is through tackling the drivers of offending that we will achieve lasting solutions for community safety,’ said Tracy Beaton, Commissioner for Children and Young People, today.
‘We know that many of the drivers of youth offending are the same as those identified in the Victorian Auditor-General’s report on rehabilitation programs at Ravenhall adult prison – educational disengagement, unemployment, homelessness, mental illness, and alcohol and drug misuse. Our work on the specific needs of children and young people also shows that unsupported disability needs, exposure to family violence, and systemic factors also play a role.
‘While rehabilitation programs should always be offered in youth detention, we know that, as the Auditor-General found at Ravenhall, problems with delays and access to programs are also likely to impact re-offending rates for children and young people in the youth justice system.
‘As well as evaluating and improving the programs that are available, we need a much greater emphasis on intervening earlier, before children and young people find themselves engaged with the youth justice system in the first place,’ Commissioner Beaton said.
The Commissioner highlighted programs targeting prevention, early intervention and diversion, together with raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14, as recommended in the Commission’s 2021 inquiry, Our youth, our way.
‘Instead of seeing rising remand rates and expanded youth detention as claimed demonstrations of effective action, we need to ask ourselves as a community what sort of society detains and excludes children and young people as a substitute for the action we really need to see?
‘We know that punitive approaches damage children and young people, and have a starkly disproportionate impact on Aboriginal children and young people, together with other over-represented groups. We also know they further criminalise children and young people and ultimately drive re-offending.
‘We should be pursuing approaches based on evidence that support the wellbeing and rights of children and young people as they work at the same time to reduce offending and make the community safer. We can do both – we don’t have to choose between them,’ Commissioner Beaton concluded.
The Commission is completing a systemic inquiry into the experiences of children at risk of engaging with the criminal justice system that will be tabled in Parliament later this year.
Media contact:
Darren Lewin-Hill
0437 046 360
Senior Communications & Media Adviser
Commissioner for Children and Young People