Our obligation to get youth crime response right
If punishment and detention-based responses to youth crime aren’t working, we need to find other and better ways.
Over the past few weeks some local media have tried to advance the narrative of a surge in youth crime. Such a narrative – underpinned by cherry-picked data – is grist for a media mill which demands a ‘tough on crime’ response from our government.
It’s disappointing, it’s predictable and most importantly of all, it’s very far away from the long-term policy and strategy discussions our society needs to be having to address our failings in caring for all children.
A full analysis of the data provides a very different lens through which to view youth offending and its consequences – and which should also continue to inform our broader and more compassionate conversations on better outcomes.
Rather than youth offending increasing, in fact it has been coming down.
Since 2008, youth offending has halved and the number of young people in detention has come down by 35 per cent. In the last year, 22 per cent more children have been complying with their bail order than in the previous year, and the number of young people under supervision is lower than it was 2016.
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One thing we all agree on is that there is a small number of young people who are repeat offenders and responsible for an outsized proportion of offending – in South Australia 31 per cent of young people are “proceeded against” more than once.
Repeat offending has been going up and the number of times young people are proceeded against has gone from on average 1.5 times per offender in 2008 to 2.1 times in 2023.
Obviously, if punitive responses to this offending – youth detention and supervision orders – worked, we would expect this number to be going down.
If punishment and detention-based responses aren’t working, we need to find other and better ways.
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Instead of locking young people up, and further criminalising them, surely we can be working intensively with them and their families and community support networks to address the issues that drive the offending behaviours.
We know from a significant number of studies of youth offending from around Australia and the world that diversionary programs reduce recidivism significantly more than detention-based responses, especially those programs that work intensively with young people, their families and their communities.
We clearly should be investing in evidence-based diversionary programs and strategies that do work, instead of spending nearly $50m in the last financial year to hold children in detention at more than $4000 per child per average day.
Encouragingly, the government has just announced a new Young Offender Plan, including investing $3m into targeted programs for this small number of repeat offenders. We now await details of whether this will be based on implementing evidence-based diversionary programs or simply strengthening policing responses and adding increasing penalties and harsher bail laws.
Similarly, it has been frustrating to learn that the government has chosen to cease its work on raising the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12, or 14.
SACOSS believes this is another example of short-term, reactive decision-making that will undoubtedly have significant long-term implications and will serve to make our community less safe.
If we are genuinely concerned about community and public safety, we have to collectively face up to what is happening to children and young people in our society.
If they are causing harm or being harmed, it is our collective obligation and the government’s responsibility to examine what is really going on, to seriously consider what the evidence is telling us, and to develop meaningful, restorative and long-term responses that lead to healing and recovery.
Ross Womersley is the CEO of the South Australian Council of Social Service (SACOSS).
