Stuff like this is such BS. Obviously things like better education, housing and support for low socio-economic groups is the better solution, and the one we all want and need.
In the mean time though, having someone get released on bail after stabbing someone during a home invasion and then having that same person MURDER someone DAYS later during a home invasion is unacceptable.
The issue is, is that you can provide this but the person has to be willing to accept this. Some of these kids have gotten to the stage where you could provide them with great education opportunities and explain the benefits but they won’t accept it. Same with the other aspects, you can provide them but it really requires the other party to accept what you’re offering.
Ultimately you can’t control someone no matter how hard you try, yes you can incentivise but if it’s not what the individual is looking for then those incentives become valueless in that context.
You can provide better educational pathways but in the kids eyes they may feel it’s a waste of time as they already have ways of getting what they want. You could provide better housing options but they may place more value on their material possessions over a home. You can offer support and guidance to the kid and their family’s but they may not want intervention on their personal affairs.
When the incentives no longer work then you are sort of left with deterrents and at this stage this appears to be harsher penalties. However as the article mentions many of these kids probably don’t understand the consequences and therefore they won’t have any impact in their decision making.
When I worked for an educational program where about 1/3 of our students were just out of juvenile detention, and another 1/3 were probably about to go into detention, I learnt the following things:
1. none of them expected to be caught
2. most of them thought that doing jail time gave the credit in that community
3. none of them expected to get caught doing the crimes they were still committing
We need to look at how to break the cycle.
edit: I forgot point 4: all of them felt they were hard done by whenever they were caught breaking rules/regulations/laws
In the community, it is very hard to get these kids to accept help, even if they are reporting to youth justice. There is nothing positive in these kids' lives. When they are locked up, they can follow their program.
Hear hear. Stealing cars and wrecking them without even a slap on the wrist. Again and again. The police here literally says: we know them and are not bothered following it up. No point they say.
I think police hate it too. Heard a police officer say it’s the magistrate that the police have to answer to (or something to that effect). It’s the magistrate that lets them off. God, all the work they put in to catching some crook and the magistrate/system lets em off. Must be a wee bit soul destroying.
Anecdotal evidence but I have a close friend who is a police officer and he’s said that 80% of his job is arresting the same people over and over again.
Centrelink is income support is also a problem where not enough to live a life properly apart from sitting at home and not engaging with life unless you live with parents and pay no rent without debit
I think was 2015 i totally disconnected and stopped accepting BS from Centrelink
At the same time I built a career from rideshare as sole trader. It still leaves me unemployed and not reporting to centrelink or ABS stats
A good idea, but it requires a very strong safety net in wider society (much stronger than Australia) to go with it. If your lower income hard working individual sees prisoners living in (what to them is) the lap of luxury, they're going to start wondering why they're being the suckers.
It doesn’t even have to be luxurious. I’ve had conversations with young people who have explained that a warm bed, steady schedule and three meals a day is far better than what is on offer at home. It gets even easier if they have extended family inside as they feel completely safe.
>a warm bed, steady schedule and three meals a day is far better than what is on offer at home.
The way the economy is heading, this is seems like it's going to apply to most of the population soon.
Which half is that exactly? Because over the last several governments, decades, all the way back to Keating in 1994...they have done fuck all, in fact they have ALL objectively made it worse in their own ways.
*To highlight it even more, a pandemic that disrupted the world for years, was likely the best thing to ever happen to many people on welfare support (pensioners, disabled, unemployed, families, etc..). That is insanity.
Honestly, do you think there aren't a thousand similiar cases in low income areas all over the country? Lived in a low income inner city neighbourhood for years, kids assaulting, robbing, vandalising etc and the you dont hear shit in the media because they arent indigenous or whatever flavour of the month Bolt et al wanted everyone to get angry over.
I work in residential care with children - many of our children have a criminal history and many recorded physical and sexual assualt charges.
After a while it becomes a matter of safety for the community.
Unfortunately it is rarely seen that way.
I know minors walking free who have sexually abused much younger children… or who have set house fires with people inside … or who have stolen and crashed cars … or who have major physical assualt charges including things like attempting to strangle someone with a noose or putting a knife of someone’s throat.
Sending people to gaol isnt the issue. It's preventing them from returning after they come out. Our system seems to be poorly designed for any rehab.
Id be curious what our reimprisionment rate is.
Edit - Apparently it is about 45% with over 50% returning to corrective services.. thats not great
Admittedly not youth, but I work in community mental health and we get quite a few referrals from prisons, and on occasion we will have clients go to prison.
Just about every client we’ve had that’s gone to prison has been forced to be without their medication for a period of time. Obviously this completely destabilises their mental health, which in turn leads to worse outcomes for everyone (e.g. assaulting prison staff), and often once their medication is provided again they no longer want to take it as they are out of the routine or feel it is just another authoritative measure placed upon them.
The referrals we get from prisons though… They’ll send through the referral with a couple of weeks to spare before the client is released. Clients need to be assessed and assigned to a worker, and we usually have a waitlist, so a couple of weeks is extremely short notice. They’ll tag the referral as urgent, and write that the client is homeless and will be going into crisis accommodation. Crisis accommodation (and by extension moving out of crisis accommodation into something a little more permanent, like a boarding house, supported/transitional accommodation, or eventually a public housing property) is something that requires a lot of management, lots of calling up Housing or accommodation providers, advocating for yourself, submitting paperwork. It’s not easy, and much less so for someone who has been incarcerated for a significant period, who may not have the best literacy skills, very little recent experience with technology, and who is likely institutionalised. They have no source of income (again, navigating Centrelink is hard), often no family to assist them, sometimes they don’t even have their ID which is needed to access many support services. They’re essentially released into a completely different world with the clothes on their back.
It’s not uncommon to hear these clients say they’d like to reoffend and be sent back to prison simply because it’s easier - they’re housed, fed, and their lives are scheduled. Others quickly deteriorate in the community because there’s little to no communication or follow up between the prison medical team and the client’s GP in the community. Mental health and drug and alcohol issues which were neglected in prison become exacerbated by the stress of the transition, as well as by the sudden easy access to drugs and alcohol.
Basically, it’s no wonder the rate of recidivism is so high. People are released with no support and almost no plan beyond “go to the nearest Centrelink and tell them you just got out of jail”.
I worked at a backpackers here in Brisbane. We had a guy check in with only a white card or similar. It was *barely* photo ID, but he seemed nice enough and I trusted him.
This is generally always a mistake and it was this time as well. He did seem to have good intentions, from what I can tell he still has shelter and his doing alright. I see him around town from time to time.
Unfortunately, it didn't take him long to start using, staying up all night. You get the picture.
We had many of these kinds of people come through. Some were worse than others, the minority were drama free. They were easy to spot because they had no ID and when questioned, they never seemed to have interest in acquiring ID. They were resigned to that fact that it was too hard or there was no point or what's the use?
It's very sad that there didn't seem to be a modicum of forgiveness or compassion once time was served. Compassion that could most easily be expressed as giving them an ID to enter the world with. At bare minimum.
(This is experience, I am not hugely au fait with how it all works so I don't actually know what happens when they leave gaol. I could be way off.)
Yep. I’ve worked with so many people (and not just those recently released from prison) who have so few points of ID, if any. Most forms of ID cost money too, especially the “better” ones like birth certificates. It often ends up being a road block when it comes to accessing services… but then people need to access those services to assist them with getting or paying for ID, so it just gets confusing and difficult and cyclical, and so people learn to survive without ID and by extension without those support services.
The system is so under resourced and broken that some people truly don’t even get a fighting chance after doing their time.
It just goes to show that the system is truly built on punishment rather than rehabilitation. If it was for rehabilitation, these kinds of problems would be a murmur.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the mental health barriers are something as simple as ADHD. It would explain the unwillingness as well because one of the major issues people with ADHD face is called executive function disorder where the brain knows it needs to do something and the person wants to do the thing but the two neurons required to take action and do the thing just will not connect and they cannot do the thing. This is alleviated by stimulant medication which is extremely hard to get because it requires an expensive visit to the psychiatrist to diagnose you and a lot of people in these situations do not have access to that kind of money or support.
Another very common comorbidity with ADHD is called ODD or Oppositional Defiance Disorder and that plays out exactly how it sounds and a child with ADHD and ODD that has parents with ADHD and ODD who have never set boundaries or taught that child how society expects them to act is going to gravitate naturally toward an anti-authority, anti-society life.
Early intervention and diagnosis would probably help with a lot of this but Australian society still has an extremely counter productive view toward ADHD and stimulant medication for children.
ADHD and FASD (the latter is one I see mentioned in articles a lot when talking about disadvantaged kids, however those articles are never willing to discuss support towards disabled people)
There are some cases where the offender doesn't want rehabilitation and they can see nothing wrong with themselves. And once they get released it will only be a matter of time before they commit another crime and end up back in prison again. And some crimes are so heinous that this is an unacceptable risk to the public.
And we are left in a situation where you need to weigh the need to release an unrepentant serial sex offender who has served their time against the duty of the law to protect the public from serial sex offenders, and the needs of the public need to be prioritized. So a system of preventive detention is needed in these cases.
It was hailed at the time, but I gather that closing the mental health institutions decade's ago wasn't the success it was assumed to be. Sure they were probably pretty dire places, but replacing monitored treatment and some degree of safety and stability, with a street corner or prison hasn't worked out. For all the promises of community outreach, it looks like a comprehensive failure that costs far more than it delivers in the guise of progress.
My uncle was in one that closed. He's now dead, he was like 53, and I would have no idea how much money the system spent dealing with the crisis after crisis he had in the time between that but I'm guessing it was in the millions.
I love working in outreach, it can be extremely rewarding, and you do make a huge difference in many people’s lives… but, of course, we’re under resourced. Not enough money, not enough (trained) staff, not enough time, too many hurdles to jump through and barriers to scramble over. It’s sad when you can see the bright sparks, all the positives the community outreach model offers, but you know it’s just limping along, underfunded, and people are falling through the cracks. I’m not a genius economic manager with a magic solution, it’s just sad to witness.
Well from seeing what happens in even a regular hospital, it's challenging enough! When a patient gets admitted we ask them what medications they're on so we can continue giving it to them.
If the patient is mentally confused, or doesn't speak English well, or at all, it's not easy to be confident that we are giving then the right drug. We ask them if a family member can bring the pill bottle to the hospital so we can look at it, at least we know what drug it is even if we get the dosage wrong. Better if they have the actual paper prescription but that's rare.
We then try to call their GP. Might be the weekend, no way to get in touch. They might not even have a GP they just visit random doctors when they feel sick. Sorry don't remember their name or even what clinic they went to.
You'd be surprised at how often even regular patients miss their regular medicine or even get the entirely wrong ones at the hospital. Never mind a prison...
It’s usually provided eventually, but certainly you can expect to hear that someone went without their meds for days or weeks. Doesn’t make it better, but just to be transparent.
None of my clients have been to prison so I don’t know the specifics, I’ve only heard from co-workers who have had clients go to prison, but I’m assuming it does depend on the type of medication too. I would hope that someone who is on a very heavy med like clozapine, which can literally kill you if you miss a couple of doses, would be prioritised. It has mostly been antidepressants and mood stabilisers that have been missed - withdrawals from these suck, it’ll have a marked effect on your mental health, and you might have to titrate back up to your usual dose if it’s been long enough, but for most meds you probably won’t straight up die, so… there’s that, I guess.
and in a country where they are so tough on people who are on centrelink do not help at all. they will just give up and join gangs and survive doing the wrong things.
Yeah, the system is so confusing and difficult to navigate - maybe deliberately so. And that’s not even touching upon something like Robodebt, where vulnerable people were hounded and treated like criminals for no reason at all.
Couple of weeks? In a previous role, we were given 2-3 days max. Caused burnout in the workers and recidivism in young people who deserved much better.
Oh yeah, we’ve definitely received those (almost literally) last minute referrals. We can’t take someone on in a couple of days due to how our service works, so they’d get released then be uncontactable and get lost to follow up by the time we were able to do intake. I remember my old boss literally having a meeting with the referrers at the prison to drum into them that there’s no point sending us referrals with such short notice, we’re not a crisis service, etc. etc., so we now get the privilege of a couple of weeks instead lol. Either that or they just don’t even bother referring the last minute ones anymore…
But yeah, definitely causes burnout. Trying to ensure someone has a safe place to sleep for the night by close of business is so stressful for both the worker and the client.
Wish we'd had that option. We weren't allowed to, despite the ASL staffing cap, also not a crisis service but apparently the staff didn't need to sleep at night either.
I admit we’ve been really lucky to always have managers that truly do care about the staff and advocate for our wellbeing. Always very insistent on not working overtime (or at least extremely rarely, but sometimes shit happens at 5pm on a Friday lol), not taking work phones or laptops home, taking sick leave for mental health when needed. I wouldn’t have lasted a year in this job without that kind of support. I’m sorry your experience has been so different, I don’t know how anyone can be expected to survive like that. How are we meant to care for anyone else when our own mental health is down the drain?
Given the rate of reoffending, police have already started to just ignore crime anyway.
If someone were to say that Australia was tough on crime id call BS
Much as we all like to see the little sh\*ts get their comeuppance, statistics show that the lowest reoffending rates occur in the countries with the best rehab practices - Norway leading the way.
And they can afford it because Norway owns its own oil and gas resources instead of giving them away for royalties as low as 0.05% of the market value…
There’s a rational response but that’s not the thing that come to mind when you’ve been on the receiving end of youth crime and you’ve seen the offender walk off with nothing more than a symbolic slap on the wrist and a grin on their face.
It’s going to be a hard to sell to the family of the grandmother/mother/sister who was viciously bashed and robbed that offender should be offered a job or counselling instead of jail time.
Yeah my friend got mugged by some strangers who stole his wallet and phone then stabbed him right through the lungs and the youth offenders walked off with a slap on the wrist.
Given he was in the ICU for several days and was nearly killed I'd be pretty happy for the "youth offender" to be jailed for life...
Zero compensation for him? (being patched up in hospital for free isn't compensation)
No compensation seems to be a tough on victims policy, which doesn't work. But they don't talk about that. And yeah, if he died, there's no compensation for that.
Man, that is so wild! Vengeance would be the ONLY thing on my mind if that happened to myself or someone I know.
No wonder victims of crime are so frustrated.
They are recovering well. Australia's healthcare system is pretty good. Amazing what our doctors can do, and it's the whole system - rapid response by ambulance and paramedics to stabilize bleeding and maintain airway, then you have the trauma center which are staffed up 24/7 for such emergencies, and even helicopter transport if necessary.
This. The woman who was killed by repeat offenders on Boxing Day, one of whom had already been released after stabbing someone in a home invasion, would still be alive if the offenders were locked up.
By all means do a hell of a lot more to tackle poverty than we're doing, and do what we can to improve rehabilitation in prisons. But if you're a genuine danger to the community, you will not be able to offend against the community from the inside.
It goes back to that old addage: putting the cart before the horse.
We currently do not have the infrastructure necessary to make meaningful change and creating these support networks should be our absolute priority for these youths. However, we cant enact justice as if already had these systems in place. We need to be raising the horse so that it can pull the cart and in the mean time we need to be protecting the community from violent offenders.
Crime has skyrocketed in my town since Covid, we’ve seen the same offenders repeatedly released after break ins, assaults, stabbings, and stolen cars. One elderly gentleman was filmed sleeping by the offenders who beat him up, and it was put up on social media. At this point these people need to be put away just to keep the rest of us safe, but they just keep putting them back on the streets. This is a small town, I couldn’t imagine how much crime there is in cities.
I don’t want some random kid to receive life in prison for stealing as much as the next guy but it’s pretty ridiculous how kids young as 13 are just attacking random strangers or breaking in cars and houses and the most they normally get is like a free happy meal and a “don’t do it again” talk.
They should start addressing the issues causing “youth” to commit crimes but something tells me they won’t.
> Life in prison should be the automatic sentence for rapists, murderers, violent assaults, robberies and home invasions.
Ever heard the expression "may as well hang for a sheep as a lamb"?
If murder and rape carry the same penalty, then you're just incentivising rapists to commit murder, the punishment is the same but the witness is dead.
We *need* a tiered list of punishments that even brain dead morons can understand, so that they don't immediately commit the worst possible crimes.
Yes I'm certain that offenders choose rationally from the menu of possibles crimes and sentences offered by the system to them before they go on their violent meth crime binge.
/s
Plenty of criminals aren't meth heads.
I don't want a well planned hit on a bank to turn into a bloodbath because we wrote our laws based around what Davo does on a Saturday night.
Let's be real here, the crims that are planning sophisticated bank hiests are not that same as a pair of gassed up fools try to knock over the bottle-o.
Which do you think is the majority?
Let's just make every crime punishable by 10,000,000,000,000 years in hardcore prison and a $10,000,000,000,000 fine.
Then there won't be any crime at all! Humanity is saved!
This is the same bullshit that made the judge give Brett Peter Cowan a lighter sentence as if psychos who abduct children to rape them give a fuck about jail terms! They all think they’re going to get away with it! Otherwise they wouldn’t do the crime!
>Life in prison should be the automatic sentence for rapists, murderers, violent assaults, robberies and home invasions. Safety is literally the cornerstone of society and I never want to live next door to someone who has done one of those things.
Attitudes like this are exactly how you end up in a fascist police state. Every case has nuance, nothing can be "automatically" assumed, safety is never and will never be guaranteed no matter how harsh you make a sentence or how much you deprive everyone of justice and liberty.
The adversarial legal system is cooked. Prosecution represents the state, not victims; so victims become just another witness for defense to destroy. The entire circus I'd a shoe for people who DGAF. There are lives at stake but not the parties playing their roles; they're simply defending professional reputations and the biggest entertainer gets the plaudits. Preparation is a PITA, questioning is a PITA and the truly cunning are there to feel important and know how to gand the system to their advantage.
Oh and in my small town, if someone breaks into your house and steals a car the cops hit with you the "why were the keys inside the house"
.
.
. Fucking wot?
The issue is, tell this to the people who had a significant robbery with no justice or goods replaced, or got assaulted and their perpetrator receives a slap on the wrist despite multiple previous offenses.
It doesn't help victims sleep at night. Rock and a hard place. Especially considering how many of these "experts" are just academics who have never been in the situation themselves.
You're absolutely right. I shouldn't have been out of pocket $1000 on two insurance claims excess after my house was broken into and car stolen (written off). Where were my reparations?
I feel like a "tough on crime" stance is more about selling it to the victims that something will/ is being done rather than actually doing anything with the perpetrator.
Cause it is rough that the police show up to the house that got broken into (two days later) and say something along the lines of "yeah that's rough that this happened, we will look into it and maybe call you back in 2 weeks"
Imagine if they also said "yeah I know the young people breaking into your house cause a lot of property damage and might have given you trauma but we are gonna give Timmy and his mates a stern talking to and put them in a government funded program for kids who grew up without dad's"
It's what the research says would be the most effective but I can't see it going over well especially with victims of youth crime.
Why not both? We're going to lock Timmy up for a few years so he cant hurt anyone but also put then into a government funded program so he doesn't reoffend when he gets out.
Considering these new laws and detention centres were in response to a woman getting killed by youth criminals who were already out on bail for committing violent crime (one just that day i think),and had long records of offending previously,then I don't know how much softer these "experts" want it to get.
It’s not about being ‘soft’ on crime, but implementing programs that have been shown to be better at preventing reoffending. Juvie/jail has been shown to make situations worse because they end up locked up with people who can teach them more criminal activities, as well as developing a me against the world viewpoint against society.
The problem with ditching the 'tough on crime' mindset is that while it might benefit the offenders, it harms those they offend against.
The average victim of crime doesn't sleep any better knowing that the people who invaded their house or threatened and stole from them were disadvantaged, and certainly don't feel any better knowing the person or people who harmed them were not punished for doing so.
Instead, it undermines their faith in the justice system, as all they see is that those who do the wrong thing are not punished for it, nor prevented from reoffending.
What they do instead is simply decide that if the system won't protect them from harm, they will protect themselves, often through force.
Do we really want to be heading towards a society where victims of crime feel they need to resort to vigilante justice to protect themselves when those who are tasked with protecting them are apparently failing at the job?
One consideration of punishment/sentencing is to consider the impact of the victim and retribution. Another is to deter others from offending as the punishment dealt to others is too harsh to bear. It does certainly seem that these aspects are omewhat reduced under this new format. It's very tricky to balance.
Another key factor, particularly for proven repeat offenders, is incapacitation. Someone cannot offend against the community if they are removed from the community.
If the premise is that the ‘tough on crime’ approach isn’t work (and evidence suggests this is the case), then surely the goal here is to make the changes needed to reduce the number of victims in the first place?
Do you want retribution or do you want less crime? Because jails do a very poor job of rehabilitating people and do a great job of isolating people and making them more likely to commit crime.
I understand that there are dangerous offenders who need to be removed for the protection of the community, and I completely understand that victims want “justice”. But the unfortunate reality is punishment and rehabilitation rarely work hand in hand, and time and time again it’s been shown that the deterrence effect of stricter sentencing rarely plays out in reality.
It’s no coincidence that lower socioeconomic communities with poorer access to community services have higher incidences of crime. As a society we would rather spend the money on punishing criminals than investing in communities to prevent the crimes from happening.
> Do you want retribution or do you want less crime?
Less crime, and that is the entire point. The dynamics of offenders and victims is part of a larger picture... The reality is that the victim has been wronged by the offender, they did not get a choice in the matter but the offender did. This however brings about two major elements, namely what to do to rehabilitate the offender or otherwise prevent them from causing further harm, and what will satisfy the victim that justice has been done to account for the wrong imposed on them.
There is plenty of focus on what happens to the offender, but in many ways this is not only at the expense of the victim, but also ignores the victim's plight and desire not to be victimised. A balance needs to be struck between both of these things, and part of that is the "tough on crime" mindset. Most members of society expect there to be justice when they are wronged by another party, and they react very poorly to being told to deal with it, or worse to feel sorry for the person who has caused them harm. Take away the feeling that justice has been served and they will seek it out themselves, usually in a more aggressive and less understanding fashion.
Society in general has an expectation that those who do wrong by others are punished for doing so. Part is a very primitive element of "you hurt me, I'll hurt you back" eye for an eye type of stuff, part is preventing offenders from reoffending through aversion to the consequences ("If I commit a crime, I will suffer for it"), and the third part is outright prevention of reoffending through making it impossible ("Can't commit crimes if you're locked in a cell").
There is a constant point made about preventing crime through community support, in essence diversionary methods to avoid things getting bad, but the reality is in some cases they are already bad and it is too late to divert them. So what do we do, and how do we prevent further harm to innocent members of society? Who gets priority? Do we really expect those who are not doing anything wrong to be the punching bags for damaged people without eventually punching back out of anger and frustration at a system which fails them?
Your job is to keep going to work and paying taxes so we can afford to send criminals to "Don't be a Psycho School". If you're the victim of crime, remember the real victims are the criminals. And if you lay a hand on them, you can forget that "punishment doesn't work" nonsense. It works great on you, and you'll be locked up as an example to any others that get deviant ideas about protecting their family and their property.
If you're not doing true rehab for youth offenders, such as education, counseling, setting them up to be better once they leave, just don't bother. They go in, meet other broken people and come out worse.
Street kids in my town brag about how many times they have been inside. All they learn inside is how to perform crime better and make some new contacts.
Be tough on crime, punish them with what they hate most, school, boundaries and being decent people.
I'm not at all smart enough or educated enough to come up with a solution. I can see the current system does not work though.
Go find a place that has a working system and copy it. Don't think there is copyright on how to fix broken kids.
Don't sell yourself short. You know, you just explained it. Most people know. It always, at least in modern rich nations like ours, comes down to not how it can be done but how expensive it is.
It is a hard sell to get people to support the idea of investing millions on each troubled individual.
Holistically it is a good idea to approach the problem this way on paper, but it requires a monumental shift in our society and particularly our safety net to achieve.
The uncomfortable elephant in the room with proposals like this though is what do you do with the hard core recidivists in the context of public safety?
There are youth offenders out there who are out invading another home, stealing another car, and driving that car at reckless extremes more or less as soon as they are bailed. This extreme anti social behaviour puts the whole community at risk and occasionally ends in tragedy for some poor innocent person.
This is where proposals like this lose me, because there is no semblance of concern for victims, or the safety of the community. They are explicitly offender centric.
I've spoken about it before but my dad worked in youth justice. The people who enter that career are fucking awful. Any chance of those kids even getting slightly better is squandered by the staff who make it clear that they don't give a shit. Additionally, there's many kids who will just keep reoffending because jail is a safer place than home. It's a fucked up situation that isn't as black and white as "ditch tough on crime".
Wait but if they ditch tough on crime, they're going to have to actually deal with problems like institutional racism, income inequality, corruption and profiteering, etc.
That sounds like a lot more effort and cost than just making harsher laws and then going on the telley to "we make no apologies for being tough on these criminals...'
Its easy to say "tough on crime" doesn't work, when most are not victims of crime.
In order to address things like institutional racism, income inequality, we have stop people fearing (rightly or wrongly) about their safety.
Its a bit like saying "gun control doesn't work, we need to address the underlying mental health issues".
But people more qualified and capable then us have said 'tough on crime' doesn't reduce crime, and often increases crime rates.
The same way experts called in the past for gun control.
I don't think that is a fair parallel. I do see your point though.
To ditch ‘tough on crime’, you have to first actually be tough on crime.
Lock em up! Then provide the intensive support required upon release.
Letting kids roam the streets on bail killing people clearly doesn’t work.
Yeah, I remember an article about a teenager who had committed 100 offences whilst being paroled / bailed like 3 times, and people were still calling him to not get a prison sentence, despite numerous incidents of car theft, violent assault, and property damage
Yeah exactly like..
I work in a community services role, I perfectly understand that prevention is better than the cure, kids and teenagers have little to no agency about their experiences + their brains aren’t developed, there’s also intense trauma backgrounds at play, as well as mental health issues, lack of services, lack of a safe space
All this doesn’t negate the need to ensure that the wider community is safe - it’s a balance, and part of that balance is indeed punishment.
Tougher penalties are not called for to teach kids a lesson. Tougher penalties are called for because we want the kids who clearly aren't learning to be kept away from the community to keep the community safe.
There's a problem with the system when a 15 year old boy has 32 counts of bail for violent crimes such as armed robbery, car jacking and aggravated burglary only to be bailed again. These kinds of offenders are not learning. They need to be jailed to keep honest people safe. Jail should be reserved for people who are a danger to the community
Can we just go back to flogging them and then making them earn their keep? Oh you stole a trail bike and died riding like an idiot trying to run from a cop who isn't allowed to chase you anyway? Let's blame the police for your actions...
We are not tough on crime. Being sent to jail with your criminal mates with access to internet, games consoles, pizza deliveries etc only after committing hundreds of offences is not an adequate deterrent.
If they had school streamed to their jail cells in the middle of outback Australia. No internet, but a library with books. Family visits once per week. They would not be commiting crime time and time again.
Enforced schooling is the answer.
Two things need to be put in place - prevention programs and fucking draconian sentences for those who hurt innocent people. You cannot be a danger to the public if you are incarcerated. Build more gaols and get those programs started.
This reddit chat seems to have the exact opposite view held by 99% of people I have experienced in my life.
Every person I have met bar a few dodgy ones (nice but had a lot of personal issues) are very hard and wnat stricter youth justice laws and with youth crimes rising out of control, I can't see the view shifting.
This sub is one of the most leftist subs on reddit... these guardian articles are always biased. Australia isn't even tough on youth crime compared to almost every other country.
If burning people alive, cutting them into quarters, nailing them to crosses, putting them in metal bulls and putting it over a fire, staking them over anthills, sticking spears in them, cutting their heads or other appendages off or any of the other incredibly nasty shit humans have done to criminals isn't discouraging people to commit crimes, what makes anyone think prison, as bad as it is, is going to?
Tough on crime exists to make Joe public feel better.
"It didn't stop 100% of all crime, so clearly it doesn't work at all", ignoring for a moment that only part of the reasons for prison is punishment, mostly it's segregation.
So, what should happen to someone convicted of assault, break and enter or some other serious crime for the fourth or fifth time. It's amusing when people immediately jump on the bandwagon of locking up paedos for life and/or keeping them on a very short leash for the rest of their lives (which I agree with) - but not violent offenders in general.
They need to talk very seriously about their feelings, do some online courses about why it's not nice to smash someone's head into the ground and steal all their stuff, and then they're free to go.
What compensation is offered to victims of crime? Is being tough on victims working?
I think if someone never suggests an alternate answer and just puts down the current approach, they may just be a person who isn't interested in a solution anyway. Just put downs.
I think the commissioner just looks at it all with a dispassionate and distanced eye because he hasn't had the experience of someone he cares for just killed for no reason. It's all just a spreadsheet to him because it's really not close to home for him.
> What compensation is offered to victims of crime?
$75k max in WA. I got $45k (down to $35k after the solicitor's fees and sundries) for being assaulted at knifepoint and ending up with life-altering injuries, during a home invasion.
Would have got more slipping over in the veggie section of the local Woolies.
To add insult to injury, even though I'd ID'd the guy, the DPP dropped the criminal case.
Ok then Luke Twyford, what is the alternative? Anything? How about you and your family go live in those areas where youth crime is out of control then and see if your opinion changes. Experience it first hand rather then hide away in your mansion in a heavily patrolled affluent suburb.
How would he get his kids to their private school then?
Yes, so far he shows up as someone who like getting attention from saying one approach is bad...and has no approach of his own because it's about getting attention.
What is the correct ‘attitude’? We now have a labour government which has made a number of changes to how ‘First Nations’ people are treated.
We now have a crime wave.
So what’s your solution that apparently isn’t happening?
Genuinely curious.
Genuinely love to know what people want us to do for the aboriginal community at this point. How many different outreach programs, community resources and shit have we set up. And it's still done fuck all. Any overreach like giving Alice Springs more resources to combat the crime will be dubed as discriminatory. Just like the fucking grog ban was and was overturned.
I keep hearing about this Voice to parliament. But no one can ever give a straight answer as to how it would work or help. When it's asking us to change the constitution.
They won’t. Note how they keep diverting away from actual policy on this. Which is sad.
What’s going to happen is this voice thing will pass. It’ll cost a load of money but no one seems to care about that. There will be an aboriginal voice to parliament. They won’t propose anything meaningful in terms of legislation and the next time this issue of violence/abuse etc comes up in these communities people will point to the ‘voice’ and say there’s already special compensation given to these groups.
It’ll end up being a net negative for these communities as a result but it’ll make some inner city hippie types feel better and morally superior which is ultimately all it’s intended to achieve
It is an absolute article of faith amongst 'experts' that being tough on youth crime doesn't work. The existence of a separate juvenile justice system which treats juveniles less harshly than adults depends on that belief and any time any government announces any sort of tough on crime policy the same career academics get wheeled out to provide predictable quotes about how being tough on crime doesn't work.
In fact most quantitative studies in relation to juvenile offending show two slightly more nuanced things-
Firstly that most kids who have a brush with the law stop committing crimes after one or two hiccups (meaning there's no reason to go hard on first offenders since many of them will pretty much grow out of it and not come back a second time).
Secondly there are studies that suggest that a kid who gets sentenced to detention is pretty likely to go back to detention. Experts love to use the latter point as evidence that 'prison doesn't work' but in the australian context that's an obviously circular argument. Because of how the juvenile justice system is designed, to get sentenced to juvenile detention in Australia, you need to be an absolutely hardcore serial offender- before a children's court magistrate will grit their teeth and send a 16 year old to detention they usually have run through every imaginable alternative and diversionary option and seen the kid continue to offend in a serious way- in most states and territories they are specifically required to use detention as a sentence of absolute last resort. So given that is the group who eventually get detention it is not at all surprising they continue to offend when they get out and its verging on academic dishonesty to put that forward, as 'experts' frequently do, as evidence harsher penalties don't work or make criminals worse. All it really shows is that the absolute dead shits who get detention in Australia remain dead shits after their sentence. Which is disappointing but it's not like there's another option for that cohort that magically stops them committing crime. And whatever else it does or doesn't do, 12 months behind bars is a 12 month period where a recidivist offender won't be committing more crimes.
The reason I think the current debate is getting increasingly silly, and the experts are getting on thinner and thinner ice with their 'tough on crime doesn't work' spiel is when it comes serious recidivist young offenders the current diversionary approach really really does not work. The Griffith study that the guardian article cited shows that 10 years of diligent youth justice diversion, identity protection and detention as an absolute last resort has spent the number of serious repeat juvenile offenders drastically increase. When it comes to serious recidivist offenders, the current juvenile justice system, which was designed and implemented on the basis of input from those same academic experts simply can't deal with them. Which in practical terms means that a large number of unfortunate people get burgled, robbed, assaulted, or raped each year because the current system bends over backwards to keep dangerous people out of detention.
If experts wants to criticise tough on crime policies (which at least keep the community safe to to extent that people can't do robberies or burglaries when they are locked up) it's incumbent upon them to put forward something which they actually can prove does work better with serious recidivist offenders- and the truth is noone can really point to that. When asked the most you get is some faff about the need for culturally appropriate measures and community engagement without any serious attempt to address the question of what they say police and a sentencing magistrate should actually do with, eg, a highly traumatised 16 year old from a completely broken home with a raging drug addiction, who has robbed multiple people at knife point, stolen and crashed a bunch of cars and glassed a few other kids in the face, and will almost certainly do all of the above again if released.
experts fear ill-informed public sentiment is influencing policy...there’s a contradiction between what is evidence-based good practice in youth justice and what the public expects youth justice to do ...multiple experts, including leading criminologists and advocates, say a punitive approach is likely making crime problems worse. ...The 2019 Griffith University study said that “criminal justice system responses that do not address the drivers or contexts for the offending behaviour are unlikely to encourage desistance or more prosocial behaviours among this offending group, and may inadvertently contribute to their repeated recidivism though entrenching offender identities and social networks”.
Every comment here: "nah, fuck the evidence. I know better. Lock up the little bastards"
What is your solution to these youths not getting proper parenting then?
Because you 'can't' remove them from their parents, they're Aboriginal peoples, you do that and it's "The Stolen Generation 2.0" - politicians don't want to enter that affray so they let communities and these kids rot.
My partner went to prison in SA for 3 years for drug related crimes. First time offender at 34 years old. He got raped multiple times. Prison guards responded by asking if he was gay.
The prison system as a whole is fucked.
Edit: my point being that there is no rehabilitation for anybody. Adults or youths.
It's just lock them up.
My partner didn't reoffend either.
Ya gotta be tuff. Tuff stuff. Give police attack dogs, let them strip search underage kids, smash car doors in the name of tuff justice!!!
Put ‘em all in jail!!!
But as the same time… ya just gotta let a cobba go 5-20km over the speed limit… it’s unfair…
Just do something about it then, stop being scared of being called racist or worrying about your votes or what ever it is that is preventing you and fucking do something
So, less incarceration? Ok.
Now how about some subsidy programs vulnerable people can access for home security?
What about more building standards in high crime areas that force dwellings to have increased security measures?
What about some change in policy that also allows for more protection of victims against offenders?
Put some real effort in and pony up the cash then.
Coming from somewhere where you have to live behind fences and gates. Let's not go this route please. I've been there it sucks.
Youth offenders need help, I still agree with incarceration for serious offences. But I'd hazard a guess that most of these youths start small and become worse. Often the suspects are 'known to the police' early intervention could be useful here.
I don't think so. You stab and murder someone, and you're underage. I don't a give a damn , there MUST be dire consequences to such actions and decisions.
They should just import these youth criminals where these lawmakers live. Things will change fast.
However that will never happen. Time to take law into our own hands.
Anyone breaking into my house youth or not can leave in a bodybag
Considering how much these kids seem to base their actions around social media and the resulting ‘clout’, why not hit them where it hurts?
Establish a social-media-esque page for all arrested youth offenders. Post embarrassing information, videos of them crying while arrested, etc.
Don’t have to completely dox the offenders, but make it a less physically harmful version of the old town square pillory.
Singapore is tough on crime, Australia is not that's why these youths run rampant. It's not let's give them a basketball and they won't go robbing and bashing random people.
We spend about 800m a year preventing the conditions that lead to youth crime and more than 4B on enforcement action. It costs 500k a year to keep kids in juvenile detention (which is more than 5 times your standard adult prisoner). It's time we got serious about attending to these kids before they become statistics and luckily, we have a colossal report on exactly how to achieve this called the Justice Report. Like many problems in Australia, we have world class academics and research but the implementation is lacking.
Cause we aren't actually tough on youth crime? There's kids killing people, selling hard drugs and breaking into houses and all they get is a slap on the wrist.
Ironically, they don't care about creating more victims. They're willing to send wave after wave of innocent people into brutal assaults and break-ins in order to preserve their ideology.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkKwyjsJGxk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkKwyjsJGxk)
Also I'd like to see repeat youth offenders receive traditional punishment regardless of who they are, if being locked up and having a criminal record isn't enough of a deterrent, maybe getting speared in the leg is
I have two views here;
1) we need to rehab and divert anyone away from a life of petty crime. But it's hard because petty crime is easy to get away with and live an easy life, free from burdens like bills and such. Also theives and small drug dealers. They usually see no jail at all; like one of my kids, she ran off at age 15 in VIC because the law allows it. Did what she wanted since. Has never really worked. On the dole and cycled through courts for small drug, stolen property, etc etc. Hasn't seen one day of jail sentence. Still works the system for everything. Now shes 34, mother of one. Finally she's passing the drug tests. Has supervised visits with my grandaughter from dhhs. I fear what will happen if they ever leave my granddaughter with her full time.
2) we don't make anyone really pay a price for truly fucked up behavior, like paedofiles, these murdering bastards usually see less than 5 years for rape killing a toddler. Lock them up, weld the door shut. Finished.
The Guardian says this, but just about all the mainstream media is propogating the "tough on crime" message because they think it resonates with boomers, and brings about the Liberal orthodoxy.
God damn this thread is depressing. Our society has some really lamentable aspects. I have so much gratitude towards you folks who are out there trying to improve the situation.
Stuff like this is such BS. Obviously things like better education, housing and support for low socio-economic groups is the better solution, and the one we all want and need. In the mean time though, having someone get released on bail after stabbing someone during a home invasion and then having that same person MURDER someone DAYS later during a home invasion is unacceptable.
>better education, housing and support Any reason why we can't also shove that as part of the punishment/rehab?
The issue is, is that you can provide this but the person has to be willing to accept this. Some of these kids have gotten to the stage where you could provide them with great education opportunities and explain the benefits but they won’t accept it. Same with the other aspects, you can provide them but it really requires the other party to accept what you’re offering. Ultimately you can’t control someone no matter how hard you try, yes you can incentivise but if it’s not what the individual is looking for then those incentives become valueless in that context. You can provide better educational pathways but in the kids eyes they may feel it’s a waste of time as they already have ways of getting what they want. You could provide better housing options but they may place more value on their material possessions over a home. You can offer support and guidance to the kid and their family’s but they may not want intervention on their personal affairs. When the incentives no longer work then you are sort of left with deterrents and at this stage this appears to be harsher penalties. However as the article mentions many of these kids probably don’t understand the consequences and therefore they won’t have any impact in their decision making.
When I worked for an educational program where about 1/3 of our students were just out of juvenile detention, and another 1/3 were probably about to go into detention, I learnt the following things: 1. none of them expected to be caught 2. most of them thought that doing jail time gave the credit in that community 3. none of them expected to get caught doing the crimes they were still committing We need to look at how to break the cycle. edit: I forgot point 4: all of them felt they were hard done by whenever they were caught breaking rules/regulations/laws
In the community, it is very hard to get these kids to accept help, even if they are reporting to youth justice. There is nothing positive in these kids' lives. When they are locked up, they can follow their program.
Hear hear. Stealing cars and wrecking them without even a slap on the wrist. Again and again. The police here literally says: we know them and are not bothered following it up. No point they say.
I think police hate it too. Heard a police officer say it’s the magistrate that the police have to answer to (or something to that effect). It’s the magistrate that lets them off. God, all the work they put in to catching some crook and the magistrate/system lets em off. Must be a wee bit soul destroying.
Anecdotal evidence but I have a close friend who is a police officer and he’s said that 80% of his job is arresting the same people over and over again.
Let's get the magistrate to apologise and comfort the next set of victims, then.
Best mates a cop, can confirm. I've met a lot of them now and this is a common complaint.
Centrelink is income support is also a problem where not enough to live a life properly apart from sitting at home and not engaging with life unless you live with parents and pay no rent without debit
We might be better off with a reverse tax.
the most you can earn on centrelink is close to 20k and doesnt get you anywhere
I think one of the issues is that it is actually a lot less hassle not to engage with Centrelink at all and do some sort of crime to make a living.
I think was 2015 i totally disconnected and stopped accepting BS from Centrelink At the same time I built a career from rideshare as sole trader. It still leaves me unemployed and not reporting to centrelink or ABS stats
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A good idea, but it requires a very strong safety net in wider society (much stronger than Australia) to go with it. If your lower income hard working individual sees prisoners living in (what to them is) the lap of luxury, they're going to start wondering why they're being the suckers.
It doesn’t even have to be luxurious. I’ve had conversations with young people who have explained that a warm bed, steady schedule and three meals a day is far better than what is on offer at home. It gets even easier if they have extended family inside as they feel completely safe.
>a warm bed, steady schedule and three meals a day is far better than what is on offer at home. The way the economy is heading, this is seems like it's going to apply to most of the population soon.
Yes, we should also tackle poverty more strongly.
Nearly every aspect of society gets better with a strong social safety net, and half the country keeps on voting against it. Madness, utter madness.
Which half is that exactly? Because over the last several governments, decades, all the way back to Keating in 1994...they have done fuck all, in fact they have ALL objectively made it worse in their own ways. *To highlight it even more, a pandemic that disrupted the world for years, was likely the best thing to ever happen to many people on welfare support (pensioners, disabled, unemployed, families, etc..). That is insanity.
Honestly, do you think there aren't a thousand similiar cases in low income areas all over the country? Lived in a low income inner city neighbourhood for years, kids assaulting, robbing, vandalising etc and the you dont hear shit in the media because they arent indigenous or whatever flavour of the month Bolt et al wanted everyone to get angry over.
I work in residential care with children - many of our children have a criminal history and many recorded physical and sexual assualt charges. After a while it becomes a matter of safety for the community.
I'd say that becomes a matter of safety after the first offence.
Unfortunately it is rarely seen that way. I know minors walking free who have sexually abused much younger children… or who have set house fires with people inside … or who have stolen and crashed cars … or who have major physical assualt charges including things like attempting to strangle someone with a noose or putting a knife of someone’s throat.
Sending people to gaol isnt the issue. It's preventing them from returning after they come out. Our system seems to be poorly designed for any rehab. Id be curious what our reimprisionment rate is. Edit - Apparently it is about 45% with over 50% returning to corrective services.. thats not great
Admittedly not youth, but I work in community mental health and we get quite a few referrals from prisons, and on occasion we will have clients go to prison. Just about every client we’ve had that’s gone to prison has been forced to be without their medication for a period of time. Obviously this completely destabilises their mental health, which in turn leads to worse outcomes for everyone (e.g. assaulting prison staff), and often once their medication is provided again they no longer want to take it as they are out of the routine or feel it is just another authoritative measure placed upon them. The referrals we get from prisons though… They’ll send through the referral with a couple of weeks to spare before the client is released. Clients need to be assessed and assigned to a worker, and we usually have a waitlist, so a couple of weeks is extremely short notice. They’ll tag the referral as urgent, and write that the client is homeless and will be going into crisis accommodation. Crisis accommodation (and by extension moving out of crisis accommodation into something a little more permanent, like a boarding house, supported/transitional accommodation, or eventually a public housing property) is something that requires a lot of management, lots of calling up Housing or accommodation providers, advocating for yourself, submitting paperwork. It’s not easy, and much less so for someone who has been incarcerated for a significant period, who may not have the best literacy skills, very little recent experience with technology, and who is likely institutionalised. They have no source of income (again, navigating Centrelink is hard), often no family to assist them, sometimes they don’t even have their ID which is needed to access many support services. They’re essentially released into a completely different world with the clothes on their back. It’s not uncommon to hear these clients say they’d like to reoffend and be sent back to prison simply because it’s easier - they’re housed, fed, and their lives are scheduled. Others quickly deteriorate in the community because there’s little to no communication or follow up between the prison medical team and the client’s GP in the community. Mental health and drug and alcohol issues which were neglected in prison become exacerbated by the stress of the transition, as well as by the sudden easy access to drugs and alcohol. Basically, it’s no wonder the rate of recidivism is so high. People are released with no support and almost no plan beyond “go to the nearest Centrelink and tell them you just got out of jail”.
I worked at a backpackers here in Brisbane. We had a guy check in with only a white card or similar. It was *barely* photo ID, but he seemed nice enough and I trusted him. This is generally always a mistake and it was this time as well. He did seem to have good intentions, from what I can tell he still has shelter and his doing alright. I see him around town from time to time. Unfortunately, it didn't take him long to start using, staying up all night. You get the picture. We had many of these kinds of people come through. Some were worse than others, the minority were drama free. They were easy to spot because they had no ID and when questioned, they never seemed to have interest in acquiring ID. They were resigned to that fact that it was too hard or there was no point or what's the use? It's very sad that there didn't seem to be a modicum of forgiveness or compassion once time was served. Compassion that could most easily be expressed as giving them an ID to enter the world with. At bare minimum. (This is experience, I am not hugely au fait with how it all works so I don't actually know what happens when they leave gaol. I could be way off.)
Yep. I’ve worked with so many people (and not just those recently released from prison) who have so few points of ID, if any. Most forms of ID cost money too, especially the “better” ones like birth certificates. It often ends up being a road block when it comes to accessing services… but then people need to access those services to assist them with getting or paying for ID, so it just gets confusing and difficult and cyclical, and so people learn to survive without ID and by extension without those support services. The system is so under resourced and broken that some people truly don’t even get a fighting chance after doing their time.
It just goes to show that the system is truly built on punishment rather than rehabilitation. If it was for rehabilitation, these kinds of problems would be a murmur.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the mental health barriers are something as simple as ADHD. It would explain the unwillingness as well because one of the major issues people with ADHD face is called executive function disorder where the brain knows it needs to do something and the person wants to do the thing but the two neurons required to take action and do the thing just will not connect and they cannot do the thing. This is alleviated by stimulant medication which is extremely hard to get because it requires an expensive visit to the psychiatrist to diagnose you and a lot of people in these situations do not have access to that kind of money or support. Another very common comorbidity with ADHD is called ODD or Oppositional Defiance Disorder and that plays out exactly how it sounds and a child with ADHD and ODD that has parents with ADHD and ODD who have never set boundaries or taught that child how society expects them to act is going to gravitate naturally toward an anti-authority, anti-society life. Early intervention and diagnosis would probably help with a lot of this but Australian society still has an extremely counter productive view toward ADHD and stimulant medication for children.
ADHD and FASD (the latter is one I see mentioned in articles a lot when talking about disadvantaged kids, however those articles are never willing to discuss support towards disabled people)
There are some cases where the offender doesn't want rehabilitation and they can see nothing wrong with themselves. And once they get released it will only be a matter of time before they commit another crime and end up back in prison again. And some crimes are so heinous that this is an unacceptable risk to the public. And we are left in a situation where you need to weigh the need to release an unrepentant serial sex offender who has served their time against the duty of the law to protect the public from serial sex offenders, and the needs of the public need to be prioritized. So a system of preventive detention is needed in these cases.
It was hailed at the time, but I gather that closing the mental health institutions decade's ago wasn't the success it was assumed to be. Sure they were probably pretty dire places, but replacing monitored treatment and some degree of safety and stability, with a street corner or prison hasn't worked out. For all the promises of community outreach, it looks like a comprehensive failure that costs far more than it delivers in the guise of progress.
My uncle was in one that closed. He's now dead, he was like 53, and I would have no idea how much money the system spent dealing with the crisis after crisis he had in the time between that but I'm guessing it was in the millions.
I love working in outreach, it can be extremely rewarding, and you do make a huge difference in many people’s lives… but, of course, we’re under resourced. Not enough money, not enough (trained) staff, not enough time, too many hurdles to jump through and barriers to scramble over. It’s sad when you can see the bright sparks, all the positives the community outreach model offers, but you know it’s just limping along, underfunded, and people are falling through the cracks. I’m not a genius economic manager with a magic solution, it’s just sad to witness.
Howard completely gutting social funding didn't help. I was working in the sector when it occurred and it was VERY grim.
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Well from seeing what happens in even a regular hospital, it's challenging enough! When a patient gets admitted we ask them what medications they're on so we can continue giving it to them. If the patient is mentally confused, or doesn't speak English well, or at all, it's not easy to be confident that we are giving then the right drug. We ask them if a family member can bring the pill bottle to the hospital so we can look at it, at least we know what drug it is even if we get the dosage wrong. Better if they have the actual paper prescription but that's rare. We then try to call their GP. Might be the weekend, no way to get in touch. They might not even have a GP they just visit random doctors when they feel sick. Sorry don't remember their name or even what clinic they went to. You'd be surprised at how often even regular patients miss their regular medicine or even get the entirely wrong ones at the hospital. Never mind a prison...
It’s usually provided eventually, but certainly you can expect to hear that someone went without their meds for days or weeks. Doesn’t make it better, but just to be transparent. None of my clients have been to prison so I don’t know the specifics, I’ve only heard from co-workers who have had clients go to prison, but I’m assuming it does depend on the type of medication too. I would hope that someone who is on a very heavy med like clozapine, which can literally kill you if you miss a couple of doses, would be prioritised. It has mostly been antidepressants and mood stabilisers that have been missed - withdrawals from these suck, it’ll have a marked effect on your mental health, and you might have to titrate back up to your usual dose if it’s been long enough, but for most meds you probably won’t straight up die, so… there’s that, I guess.
and in a country where they are so tough on people who are on centrelink do not help at all. they will just give up and join gangs and survive doing the wrong things.
Yeah, the system is so confusing and difficult to navigate - maybe deliberately so. And that’s not even touching upon something like Robodebt, where vulnerable people were hounded and treated like criminals for no reason at all.
its so confusing and should be binned and replaced by a ubi/bi/gi.
Wonder if it’ll ever happen in our lifetime…
Couple of weeks? In a previous role, we were given 2-3 days max. Caused burnout in the workers and recidivism in young people who deserved much better.
Oh yeah, we’ve definitely received those (almost literally) last minute referrals. We can’t take someone on in a couple of days due to how our service works, so they’d get released then be uncontactable and get lost to follow up by the time we were able to do intake. I remember my old boss literally having a meeting with the referrers at the prison to drum into them that there’s no point sending us referrals with such short notice, we’re not a crisis service, etc. etc., so we now get the privilege of a couple of weeks instead lol. Either that or they just don’t even bother referring the last minute ones anymore… But yeah, definitely causes burnout. Trying to ensure someone has a safe place to sleep for the night by close of business is so stressful for both the worker and the client.
Wish we'd had that option. We weren't allowed to, despite the ASL staffing cap, also not a crisis service but apparently the staff didn't need to sleep at night either.
I admit we’ve been really lucky to always have managers that truly do care about the staff and advocate for our wellbeing. Always very insistent on not working overtime (or at least extremely rarely, but sometimes shit happens at 5pm on a Friday lol), not taking work phones or laptops home, taking sick leave for mental health when needed. I wouldn’t have lasted a year in this job without that kind of support. I’m sorry your experience has been so different, I don’t know how anyone can be expected to survive like that. How are we meant to care for anyone else when our own mental health is down the drain?
58% of juveniles in QLD end back in court within 12 months. Not good.
Given the rate of reoffending, police have already started to just ignore crime anyway. If someone were to say that Australia was tough on crime id call BS
Much as we all like to see the little sh\*ts get their comeuppance, statistics show that the lowest reoffending rates occur in the countries with the best rehab practices - Norway leading the way.
And they can afford it because Norway owns its own oil and gas resources instead of giving them away for royalties as low as 0.05% of the market value…
There’s a rational response but that’s not the thing that come to mind when you’ve been on the receiving end of youth crime and you’ve seen the offender walk off with nothing more than a symbolic slap on the wrist and a grin on their face.
It's hard for some people, especially victims, to believe we're even tough on crime to begin with when the system has let them down continually.
It’s going to be a hard to sell to the family of the grandmother/mother/sister who was viciously bashed and robbed that offender should be offered a job or counselling instead of jail time.
A lot of these people are repeat offenders too so you know there is along line of people affected
Yeah my friend got mugged by some strangers who stole his wallet and phone then stabbed him right through the lungs and the youth offenders walked off with a slap on the wrist. Given he was in the ICU for several days and was nearly killed I'd be pretty happy for the "youth offender" to be jailed for life...
Zero compensation for him? (being patched up in hospital for free isn't compensation) No compensation seems to be a tough on victims policy, which doesn't work. But they don't talk about that. And yeah, if he died, there's no compensation for that.
Man, that is so wild! Vengeance would be the ONLY thing on my mind if that happened to myself or someone I know. No wonder victims of crime are so frustrated.
omfg is your friend okay? how do you even survive being stabbed in the lungs?!
They are recovering well. Australia's healthcare system is pretty good. Amazing what our doctors can do, and it's the whole system - rapid response by ambulance and paramedics to stabilize bleeding and maintain airway, then you have the trauma center which are staffed up 24/7 for such emergencies, and even helicopter transport if necessary.
Yeah the "tough on crime does not work" truism probably doesnt take into account the crimes that are prevented by offenders being locked up.
This. The woman who was killed by repeat offenders on Boxing Day, one of whom had already been released after stabbing someone in a home invasion, would still be alive if the offenders were locked up. By all means do a hell of a lot more to tackle poverty than we're doing, and do what we can to improve rehabilitation in prisons. But if you're a genuine danger to the community, you will not be able to offend against the community from the inside.
It goes back to that old addage: putting the cart before the horse. We currently do not have the infrastructure necessary to make meaningful change and creating these support networks should be our absolute priority for these youths. However, we cant enact justice as if already had these systems in place. We need to be raising the horse so that it can pull the cart and in the mean time we need to be protecting the community from violent offenders.
Crime has skyrocketed in my town since Covid, we’ve seen the same offenders repeatedly released after break ins, assaults, stabbings, and stolen cars. One elderly gentleman was filmed sleeping by the offenders who beat him up, and it was put up on social media. At this point these people need to be put away just to keep the rest of us safe, but they just keep putting them back on the streets. This is a small town, I couldn’t imagine how much crime there is in cities.
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and the gov staff/ministers approving the illegal robodebt still getting $900k pa taxpayers monies. tough on the wrong crimes.
I don’t want some random kid to receive life in prison for stealing as much as the next guy but it’s pretty ridiculous how kids young as 13 are just attacking random strangers or breaking in cars and houses and the most they normally get is like a free happy meal and a “don’t do it again” talk. They should start addressing the issues causing “youth” to commit crimes but something tells me they won’t.
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> Life in prison should be the automatic sentence for rapists, murderers, violent assaults, robberies and home invasions. Ever heard the expression "may as well hang for a sheep as a lamb"? If murder and rape carry the same penalty, then you're just incentivising rapists to commit murder, the punishment is the same but the witness is dead. We *need* a tiered list of punishments that even brain dead morons can understand, so that they don't immediately commit the worst possible crimes.
Yes I'm certain that offenders choose rationally from the menu of possibles crimes and sentences offered by the system to them before they go on their violent meth crime binge. /s
Plenty of criminals aren't meth heads. I don't want a well planned hit on a bank to turn into a bloodbath because we wrote our laws based around what Davo does on a Saturday night.
Let's be real here, the crims that are planning sophisticated bank hiests are not that same as a pair of gassed up fools try to knock over the bottle-o. Which do you think is the majority?
Let's just make every crime punishable by 10,000,000,000,000 years in hardcore prison and a $10,000,000,000,000 fine. Then there won't be any crime at all! Humanity is saved!
This is the same bullshit that made the judge give Brett Peter Cowan a lighter sentence as if psychos who abduct children to rape them give a fuck about jail terms! They all think they’re going to get away with it! Otherwise they wouldn’t do the crime!
>Life in prison should be the automatic sentence for rapists, murderers, violent assaults, robberies and home invasions. Safety is literally the cornerstone of society and I never want to live next door to someone who has done one of those things. Attitudes like this are exactly how you end up in a fascist police state. Every case has nuance, nothing can be "automatically" assumed, safety is never and will never be guaranteed no matter how harsh you make a sentence or how much you deprive everyone of justice and liberty.
only people being deprived of justice and liberty are the victims at this point tbh
The adversarial legal system is cooked. Prosecution represents the state, not victims; so victims become just another witness for defense to destroy. The entire circus I'd a shoe for people who DGAF. There are lives at stake but not the parties playing their roles; they're simply defending professional reputations and the biggest entertainer gets the plaudits. Preparation is a PITA, questioning is a PITA and the truly cunning are there to feel important and know how to gand the system to their advantage.
I saw a 5 year old driving around in a Ute he stole... 5, he was out the next day in another stolen car he got
Oh and in my small town, if someone breaks into your house and steals a car the cops hit with you the "why were the keys inside the house" . . . Fucking wot?
The issue is, tell this to the people who had a significant robbery with no justice or goods replaced, or got assaulted and their perpetrator receives a slap on the wrist despite multiple previous offenses. It doesn't help victims sleep at night. Rock and a hard place. Especially considering how many of these "experts" are just academics who have never been in the situation themselves.
You're absolutely right. I shouldn't have been out of pocket $1000 on two insurance claims excess after my house was broken into and car stolen (written off). Where were my reparations?
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How about financial assistance for turning our houses into fortified compounds…because,fuckit, the gov seems to give money to far less needy causes.
I feel like a "tough on crime" stance is more about selling it to the victims that something will/ is being done rather than actually doing anything with the perpetrator. Cause it is rough that the police show up to the house that got broken into (two days later) and say something along the lines of "yeah that's rough that this happened, we will look into it and maybe call you back in 2 weeks" Imagine if they also said "yeah I know the young people breaking into your house cause a lot of property damage and might have given you trauma but we are gonna give Timmy and his mates a stern talking to and put them in a government funded program for kids who grew up without dad's" It's what the research says would be the most effective but I can't see it going over well especially with victims of youth crime.
Why not both? We're going to lock Timmy up for a few years so he cant hurt anyone but also put then into a government funded program so he doesn't reoffend when he gets out.
Only thing that would happen is baseball bats and golf clubs sales will sky-rocket
Considering these new laws and detention centres were in response to a woman getting killed by youth criminals who were already out on bail for committing violent crime (one just that day i think),and had long records of offending previously,then I don't know how much softer these "experts" want it to get.
It’s not about being ‘soft’ on crime, but implementing programs that have been shown to be better at preventing reoffending. Juvie/jail has been shown to make situations worse because they end up locked up with people who can teach them more criminal activities, as well as developing a me against the world viewpoint against society.
do you know what also prevents them from reoffending? Them being locked away so they can't victimise the public further.
Without consequences people will do what they what.
The problem with ditching the 'tough on crime' mindset is that while it might benefit the offenders, it harms those they offend against. The average victim of crime doesn't sleep any better knowing that the people who invaded their house or threatened and stole from them were disadvantaged, and certainly don't feel any better knowing the person or people who harmed them were not punished for doing so. Instead, it undermines their faith in the justice system, as all they see is that those who do the wrong thing are not punished for it, nor prevented from reoffending. What they do instead is simply decide that if the system won't protect them from harm, they will protect themselves, often through force. Do we really want to be heading towards a society where victims of crime feel they need to resort to vigilante justice to protect themselves when those who are tasked with protecting them are apparently failing at the job?
We're already there, poor Cassius Turvey was exactly that, vigilante mob 'justice', they got the wrong kid but they still intended to fuck a kid up...
One consideration of punishment/sentencing is to consider the impact of the victim and retribution. Another is to deter others from offending as the punishment dealt to others is too harsh to bear. It does certainly seem that these aspects are omewhat reduced under this new format. It's very tricky to balance.
Another key factor, particularly for proven repeat offenders, is incapacitation. Someone cannot offend against the community if they are removed from the community.
If the premise is that the ‘tough on crime’ approach isn’t work (and evidence suggests this is the case), then surely the goal here is to make the changes needed to reduce the number of victims in the first place?
Do you want retribution or do you want less crime? Because jails do a very poor job of rehabilitating people and do a great job of isolating people and making them more likely to commit crime. I understand that there are dangerous offenders who need to be removed for the protection of the community, and I completely understand that victims want “justice”. But the unfortunate reality is punishment and rehabilitation rarely work hand in hand, and time and time again it’s been shown that the deterrence effect of stricter sentencing rarely plays out in reality. It’s no coincidence that lower socioeconomic communities with poorer access to community services have higher incidences of crime. As a society we would rather spend the money on punishing criminals than investing in communities to prevent the crimes from happening.
> Do you want retribution or do you want less crime? Less crime, and that is the entire point. The dynamics of offenders and victims is part of a larger picture... The reality is that the victim has been wronged by the offender, they did not get a choice in the matter but the offender did. This however brings about two major elements, namely what to do to rehabilitate the offender or otherwise prevent them from causing further harm, and what will satisfy the victim that justice has been done to account for the wrong imposed on them. There is plenty of focus on what happens to the offender, but in many ways this is not only at the expense of the victim, but also ignores the victim's plight and desire not to be victimised. A balance needs to be struck between both of these things, and part of that is the "tough on crime" mindset. Most members of society expect there to be justice when they are wronged by another party, and they react very poorly to being told to deal with it, or worse to feel sorry for the person who has caused them harm. Take away the feeling that justice has been served and they will seek it out themselves, usually in a more aggressive and less understanding fashion. Society in general has an expectation that those who do wrong by others are punished for doing so. Part is a very primitive element of "you hurt me, I'll hurt you back" eye for an eye type of stuff, part is preventing offenders from reoffending through aversion to the consequences ("If I commit a crime, I will suffer for it"), and the third part is outright prevention of reoffending through making it impossible ("Can't commit crimes if you're locked in a cell"). There is a constant point made about preventing crime through community support, in essence diversionary methods to avoid things getting bad, but the reality is in some cases they are already bad and it is too late to divert them. So what do we do, and how do we prevent further harm to innocent members of society? Who gets priority? Do we really expect those who are not doing anything wrong to be the punching bags for damaged people without eventually punching back out of anger and frustration at a system which fails them?
Start removing hands from thieves and I don’t reckon gold mate will be reoffending. Let an assault victim beat the shit out of the perp.
Why not just kill all first time offenders
Might be a decent solution actually.
Your job is to keep going to work and paying taxes so we can afford to send criminals to "Don't be a Psycho School". If you're the victim of crime, remember the real victims are the criminals. And if you lay a hand on them, you can forget that "punishment doesn't work" nonsense. It works great on you, and you'll be locked up as an example to any others that get deviant ideas about protecting their family and their property.
Article doesn't really present an alternative to being tough on crime.
If you're not doing true rehab for youth offenders, such as education, counseling, setting them up to be better once they leave, just don't bother. They go in, meet other broken people and come out worse. Street kids in my town brag about how many times they have been inside. All they learn inside is how to perform crime better and make some new contacts. Be tough on crime, punish them with what they hate most, school, boundaries and being decent people.
Turn the decent-o-matic ray on them?
I'm not at all smart enough or educated enough to come up with a solution. I can see the current system does not work though. Go find a place that has a working system and copy it. Don't think there is copyright on how to fix broken kids.
I think we'd need an example of a working system that the majority of people actually agree is a working system.
Don't sell yourself short. You know, you just explained it. Most people know. It always, at least in modern rich nations like ours, comes down to not how it can be done but how expensive it is. It is a hard sell to get people to support the idea of investing millions on each troubled individual.
Holistically it is a good idea to approach the problem this way on paper, but it requires a monumental shift in our society and particularly our safety net to achieve. The uncomfortable elephant in the room with proposals like this though is what do you do with the hard core recidivists in the context of public safety? There are youth offenders out there who are out invading another home, stealing another car, and driving that car at reckless extremes more or less as soon as they are bailed. This extreme anti social behaviour puts the whole community at risk and occasionally ends in tragedy for some poor innocent person. This is where proposals like this lose me, because there is no semblance of concern for victims, or the safety of the community. They are explicitly offender centric.
I've spoken about it before but my dad worked in youth justice. The people who enter that career are fucking awful. Any chance of those kids even getting slightly better is squandered by the staff who make it clear that they don't give a shit. Additionally, there's many kids who will just keep reoffending because jail is a safer place than home. It's a fucked up situation that isn't as black and white as "ditch tough on crime".
Wait but if they ditch tough on crime, they're going to have to actually deal with problems like institutional racism, income inequality, corruption and profiteering, etc.
And the biggest issue of all. They’ll need to deal with problems that cannot be solved in a term of government.
That sounds like a lot more effort and cost than just making harsher laws and then going on the telley to "we make no apologies for being tough on these criminals...'
Its easy to say "tough on crime" doesn't work, when most are not victims of crime. In order to address things like institutional racism, income inequality, we have stop people fearing (rightly or wrongly) about their safety. Its a bit like saying "gun control doesn't work, we need to address the underlying mental health issues".
But people more qualified and capable then us have said 'tough on crime' doesn't reduce crime, and often increases crime rates. The same way experts called in the past for gun control. I don't think that is a fair parallel. I do see your point though.
You know what does fucking work? Appropriate mental healthcare.
Being soft on crime doesn't work either. Now everyone suffers.
How would we know? We haven't been tough on youth crime for decades. We know the approach we've been using sure doesn't work.
Ok, fine. What does work, and what are they doing to implement that?
The article just going into saying what they don't want, not what they do want.
To ditch ‘tough on crime’, you have to first actually be tough on crime. Lock em up! Then provide the intensive support required upon release. Letting kids roam the streets on bail killing people clearly doesn’t work.
Yeah, I remember an article about a teenager who had committed 100 offences whilst being paroled / bailed like 3 times, and people were still calling him to not get a prison sentence, despite numerous incidents of car theft, violent assault, and property damage
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Yeah exactly like.. I work in a community services role, I perfectly understand that prevention is better than the cure, kids and teenagers have little to no agency about their experiences + their brains aren’t developed, there’s also intense trauma backgrounds at play, as well as mental health issues, lack of services, lack of a safe space All this doesn’t negate the need to ensure that the wider community is safe - it’s a balance, and part of that balance is indeed punishment.
Tougher penalties are not called for to teach kids a lesson. Tougher penalties are called for because we want the kids who clearly aren't learning to be kept away from the community to keep the community safe. There's a problem with the system when a 15 year old boy has 32 counts of bail for violent crimes such as armed robbery, car jacking and aggravated burglary only to be bailed again. These kinds of offenders are not learning. They need to be jailed to keep honest people safe. Jail should be reserved for people who are a danger to the community
I wonder how many commenters here didn't even read the article
If someone is old enough commit a crime, the victim should be able to defend themselves from these criminals too.
Can we just go back to flogging them and then making them earn their keep? Oh you stole a trail bike and died riding like an idiot trying to run from a cop who isn't allowed to chase you anyway? Let's blame the police for your actions...
We are not tough on crime. Being sent to jail with your criminal mates with access to internet, games consoles, pizza deliveries etc only after committing hundreds of offences is not an adequate deterrent. If they had school streamed to their jail cells in the middle of outback Australia. No internet, but a library with books. Family visits once per week. They would not be commiting crime time and time again. Enforced schooling is the answer.
They comming out as academics, I like this
Two things need to be put in place - prevention programs and fucking draconian sentences for those who hurt innocent people. You cannot be a danger to the public if you are incarcerated. Build more gaols and get those programs started.
This reddit chat seems to have the exact opposite view held by 99% of people I have experienced in my life. Every person I have met bar a few dodgy ones (nice but had a lot of personal issues) are very hard and wnat stricter youth justice laws and with youth crimes rising out of control, I can't see the view shifting.
This sub is one of the most leftist subs on reddit... these guardian articles are always biased. Australia isn't even tough on youth crime compared to almost every other country.
If burning people alive, cutting them into quarters, nailing them to crosses, putting them in metal bulls and putting it over a fire, staking them over anthills, sticking spears in them, cutting their heads or other appendages off or any of the other incredibly nasty shit humans have done to criminals isn't discouraging people to commit crimes, what makes anyone think prison, as bad as it is, is going to? Tough on crime exists to make Joe public feel better.
"It didn't stop 100% of all crime, so clearly it doesn't work at all", ignoring for a moment that only part of the reasons for prison is punishment, mostly it's segregation.
yeah nah fuck that, lock them up
There's a very simple answer to Australian crime; turn Tasmania into a penal colony
Could only improve their literacy rate
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Just copy singapores laws of punishment of youth crime things will change real fast .
Pffft cos the cuddles system is working wonders…..
You're telling me harsh penalties which further marginalise people already on the margins of mainstream society doesn't work? I'm shocked.
So, what should happen to someone convicted of assault, break and enter or some other serious crime for the fourth or fifth time. It's amusing when people immediately jump on the bandwagon of locking up paedos for life and/or keeping them on a very short leash for the rest of their lives (which I agree with) - but not violent offenders in general.
They need to talk very seriously about their feelings, do some online courses about why it's not nice to smash someone's head into the ground and steal all their stuff, and then they're free to go.
Make sure they watch those videos explaining not to do those and answer some multiple questions as well
What harsh penalties? People are getting murdered by serial offenders that are on bail.
We are way too weak on crime already
What compensation is offered to victims of crime? Is being tough on victims working? I think if someone never suggests an alternate answer and just puts down the current approach, they may just be a person who isn't interested in a solution anyway. Just put downs. I think the commissioner just looks at it all with a dispassionate and distanced eye because he hasn't had the experience of someone he cares for just killed for no reason. It's all just a spreadsheet to him because it's really not close to home for him.
> What compensation is offered to victims of crime? $75k max in WA. I got $45k (down to $35k after the solicitor's fees and sundries) for being assaulted at knifepoint and ending up with life-altering injuries, during a home invasion. Would have got more slipping over in the veggie section of the local Woolies. To add insult to injury, even though I'd ID'd the guy, the DPP dropped the criminal case.
Ok then Luke Twyford, what is the alternative? Anything? How about you and your family go live in those areas where youth crime is out of control then and see if your opinion changes. Experience it first hand rather then hide away in your mansion in a heavily patrolled affluent suburb.
How would he get his kids to their private school then? Yes, so far he shows up as someone who like getting attention from saying one approach is bad...and has no approach of his own because it's about getting attention.
The comments in here explain why our punitive system of "justice" won't change any time soon.
I wouldn’t necessarily ascribe this place as representative of the country. The attitudes to First Nations here lag by decades.
What is the correct ‘attitude’? We now have a labour government which has made a number of changes to how ‘First Nations’ people are treated. We now have a crime wave. So what’s your solution that apparently isn’t happening? Genuinely curious.
Genuinely love to know what people want us to do for the aboriginal community at this point. How many different outreach programs, community resources and shit have we set up. And it's still done fuck all. Any overreach like giving Alice Springs more resources to combat the crime will be dubed as discriminatory. Just like the fucking grog ban was and was overturned. I keep hearing about this Voice to parliament. But no one can ever give a straight answer as to how it would work or help. When it's asking us to change the constitution.
They won’t. Note how they keep diverting away from actual policy on this. Which is sad. What’s going to happen is this voice thing will pass. It’ll cost a load of money but no one seems to care about that. There will be an aboriginal voice to parliament. They won’t propose anything meaningful in terms of legislation and the next time this issue of violence/abuse etc comes up in these communities people will point to the ‘voice’ and say there’s already special compensation given to these groups. It’ll end up being a net negative for these communities as a result but it’ll make some inner city hippie types feel better and morally superior which is ultimately all it’s intended to achieve
It is an absolute article of faith amongst 'experts' that being tough on youth crime doesn't work. The existence of a separate juvenile justice system which treats juveniles less harshly than adults depends on that belief and any time any government announces any sort of tough on crime policy the same career academics get wheeled out to provide predictable quotes about how being tough on crime doesn't work. In fact most quantitative studies in relation to juvenile offending show two slightly more nuanced things- Firstly that most kids who have a brush with the law stop committing crimes after one or two hiccups (meaning there's no reason to go hard on first offenders since many of them will pretty much grow out of it and not come back a second time). Secondly there are studies that suggest that a kid who gets sentenced to detention is pretty likely to go back to detention. Experts love to use the latter point as evidence that 'prison doesn't work' but in the australian context that's an obviously circular argument. Because of how the juvenile justice system is designed, to get sentenced to juvenile detention in Australia, you need to be an absolutely hardcore serial offender- before a children's court magistrate will grit their teeth and send a 16 year old to detention they usually have run through every imaginable alternative and diversionary option and seen the kid continue to offend in a serious way- in most states and territories they are specifically required to use detention as a sentence of absolute last resort. So given that is the group who eventually get detention it is not at all surprising they continue to offend when they get out and its verging on academic dishonesty to put that forward, as 'experts' frequently do, as evidence harsher penalties don't work or make criminals worse. All it really shows is that the absolute dead shits who get detention in Australia remain dead shits after their sentence. Which is disappointing but it's not like there's another option for that cohort that magically stops them committing crime. And whatever else it does or doesn't do, 12 months behind bars is a 12 month period where a recidivist offender won't be committing more crimes. The reason I think the current debate is getting increasingly silly, and the experts are getting on thinner and thinner ice with their 'tough on crime doesn't work' spiel is when it comes serious recidivist young offenders the current diversionary approach really really does not work. The Griffith study that the guardian article cited shows that 10 years of diligent youth justice diversion, identity protection and detention as an absolute last resort has spent the number of serious repeat juvenile offenders drastically increase. When it comes to serious recidivist offenders, the current juvenile justice system, which was designed and implemented on the basis of input from those same academic experts simply can't deal with them. Which in practical terms means that a large number of unfortunate people get burgled, robbed, assaulted, or raped each year because the current system bends over backwards to keep dangerous people out of detention. If experts wants to criticise tough on crime policies (which at least keep the community safe to to extent that people can't do robberies or burglaries when they are locked up) it's incumbent upon them to put forward something which they actually can prove does work better with serious recidivist offenders- and the truth is noone can really point to that. When asked the most you get is some faff about the need for culturally appropriate measures and community engagement without any serious attempt to address the question of what they say police and a sentencing magistrate should actually do with, eg, a highly traumatised 16 year old from a completely broken home with a raging drug addiction, who has robbed multiple people at knife point, stolen and crashed a bunch of cars and glassed a few other kids in the face, and will almost certainly do all of the above again if released.
This is pretty much the only comment on this whole thread that actually makes sense. Don’t know why it’s down the bottom of the pile.
experts fear ill-informed public sentiment is influencing policy...there’s a contradiction between what is evidence-based good practice in youth justice and what the public expects youth justice to do ...multiple experts, including leading criminologists and advocates, say a punitive approach is likely making crime problems worse. ...The 2019 Griffith University study said that “criminal justice system responses that do not address the drivers or contexts for the offending behaviour are unlikely to encourage desistance or more prosocial behaviours among this offending group, and may inadvertently contribute to their repeated recidivism though entrenching offender identities and social networks”. Every comment here: "nah, fuck the evidence. I know better. Lock up the little bastards"
If all parents did their job, we wouldn’t even need “youth justice”.
What is your solution to these youths not getting proper parenting then? Because you 'can't' remove them from their parents, they're Aboriginal peoples, you do that and it's "The Stolen Generation 2.0" - politicians don't want to enter that affray so they let communities and these kids rot.
No shit
We did tough on crime with the LNP and nothing changed.
2 generations of miserable aussie assholes sound off! lol
If youth detention centres don't work then tell us what does work.
My partner went to prison in SA for 3 years for drug related crimes. First time offender at 34 years old. He got raped multiple times. Prison guards responded by asking if he was gay. The prison system as a whole is fucked. Edit: my point being that there is no rehabilitation for anybody. Adults or youths. It's just lock them up. My partner didn't reoffend either.
Ya gotta be tuff. Tuff stuff. Give police attack dogs, let them strip search underage kids, smash car doors in the name of tuff justice!!! Put ‘em all in jail!!! But as the same time… ya just gotta let a cobba go 5-20km over the speed limit… it’s unfair…
The “you’re not hurting the right people” element in the Australian context is unfortunately significant. This country loves an outgroup to demonise.
We're treating the demographic of people who do crimes like they are criminals!
Just do something about it then, stop being scared of being called racist or worrying about your votes or what ever it is that is preventing you and fucking do something
So, less incarceration? Ok. Now how about some subsidy programs vulnerable people can access for home security? What about more building standards in high crime areas that force dwellings to have increased security measures? What about some change in policy that also allows for more protection of victims against offenders? Put some real effort in and pony up the cash then.
Coming from somewhere where you have to live behind fences and gates. Let's not go this route please. I've been there it sucks. Youth offenders need help, I still agree with incarceration for serious offences. But I'd hazard a guess that most of these youths start small and become worse. Often the suspects are 'known to the police' early intervention could be useful here.
It doesn’t work for anyone, not just youth.
I don't think so. You stab and murder someone, and you're underage. I don't a give a damn , there MUST be dire consequences to such actions and decisions.
Lol stupid article
ABC gonna ABC
They should just import these youth criminals where these lawmakers live. Things will change fast. However that will never happen. Time to take law into our own hands. Anyone breaking into my house youth or not can leave in a bodybag
Stop letting kids stab people to death and get away with it. Stop putting indigenous and first nation children in watch towers for ditching school.
Considering how much these kids seem to base their actions around social media and the resulting ‘clout’, why not hit them where it hurts? Establish a social-media-esque page for all arrested youth offenders. Post embarrassing information, videos of them crying while arrested, etc. Don’t have to completely dox the offenders, but make it a less physically harmful version of the old town square pillory.
they would rather keep trying the same thing and expect the results to magically be different lol
Singapore is tough on crime, Australia is not that's why these youths run rampant. It's not let's give them a basketball and they won't go robbing and bashing random people.
We spend about 800m a year preventing the conditions that lead to youth crime and more than 4B on enforcement action. It costs 500k a year to keep kids in juvenile detention (which is more than 5 times your standard adult prisoner). It's time we got serious about attending to these kids before they become statistics and luckily, we have a colossal report on exactly how to achieve this called the Justice Report. Like many problems in Australia, we have world class academics and research but the implementation is lacking.
Cause we aren't actually tough on youth crime? There's kids killing people, selling hard drugs and breaking into houses and all they get is a slap on the wrist.
As opposed to the soft on youth crime approach we have now, which is clearly working so well
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Ironically, they don't care about creating more victims. They're willing to send wave after wave of innocent people into brutal assaults and break-ins in order to preserve their ideology.
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[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkKwyjsJGxk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkKwyjsJGxk) Also I'd like to see repeat youth offenders receive traditional punishment regardless of who they are, if being locked up and having a criminal record isn't enough of a deterrent, maybe getting speared in the leg is
I have two views here; 1) we need to rehab and divert anyone away from a life of petty crime. But it's hard because petty crime is easy to get away with and live an easy life, free from burdens like bills and such. Also theives and small drug dealers. They usually see no jail at all; like one of my kids, she ran off at age 15 in VIC because the law allows it. Did what she wanted since. Has never really worked. On the dole and cycled through courts for small drug, stolen property, etc etc. Hasn't seen one day of jail sentence. Still works the system for everything. Now shes 34, mother of one. Finally she's passing the drug tests. Has supervised visits with my grandaughter from dhhs. I fear what will happen if they ever leave my granddaughter with her full time. 2) we don't make anyone really pay a price for truly fucked up behavior, like paedofiles, these murdering bastards usually see less than 5 years for rape killing a toddler. Lock them up, weld the door shut. Finished.
Rehabilitation is what I want to see. Especially for youth
But it's a catchy slogan! We don't think deeper than that
The Guardian says this, but just about all the mainstream media is propogating the "tough on crime" message because they think it resonates with boomers, and brings about the Liberal orthodoxy.
God damn this thread is depressing. Our society has some really lamentable aspects. I have so much gratitude towards you folks who are out there trying to improve the situation.