Chapter 6 - Children and young people in juvenile justice and detention centres
Children and young people in juvenile justice centres
6.1
The Committee received evidence relating to children
and young people in juvenile justice centres. The following discussion provides
a broad outline of some of the many issues facing children and young people in
the juvenile justice system.
Legislative framework
6.2
Across Australia,
State and Territory legislation provides a framework to deal with young people
who are suspected or convicted of committing a criminal offence and applies to
situations where young people may be placed in a juvenile justice centre. As
with aspects of Australia's
mainstream care and protection laws for children and young people, their
provisions vary among jurisdictions. Examples of legislative provisions
outlined to the Committee include the following. The Tasmanian Commissioner for
Children noted that under s.124(1) of the Tasmanian Youth Justice Act 1997, children and young people in custody at a
juvenile justice facility, either on remand or for a conviction, are the
responsibility of the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.[597] The Western Australian Department of
Justice submitted that that State's Young
Offenders Act 1994 recognises that juvenile offending is transitory and
minor, and that young offenders should not be given a greater punishment than
an adult for a similar offence.[598]
6.3
The Commonwealth has direct responsibility for young
federal offenders, who are dealt with by procedures laid down under the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth). Offences for
which a young person may be charged under the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth) include damaging federal government property.
The Commonwealth has also assumed responsibilities relevant to juvenile justice
processes under international instruments. Articles 37 and 40 of the United
Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child have set down principles for the treatment
of young suspects and offenders and require States Parties to develop and
maintain a separate juvenile justice system.[599]
6.4
The Australasian Juvenile Justice Administrators
endorsed the Standards for Juvenile Custodial Facilities in March 1999.[600] The standards are based on the
United Nations Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty;
the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile
Justice (the Beijing Rules) and the UN Convention. Included in the standards'
objectives are those to ensure a safe and secure environment where detainees
can be assisted to address their offending behaviour. For example, Western
Australia's Department of Justice advised that it had
adopted the Standards for Juvenile Custodial Facilities in July 2000 and
managed juveniles in detention in line with such principles.[601]
6.5
The Queensland Commission for Children and Young People
advised of its legislative responsibility to receive, seek to resolve, monitor
and investigate complaints about services provided to children under child
protection or juvenile justice orders, in government and non-government
organisations which are in receipt of government funding. As such, services
received by children in youth detention centres are matters of complaint which
may be received by the Commission. The Commission advised that under its
Community Visitor Program, 24 community visitors
State wide visit children in
out-of-home facilities such as youth detention centres and authorised mental
health services.[602]
6.6
Jurisdictions have a range of options for dealing with
young offenders who come before a court. These include community-based and
custodial orders. Custodial orders result in young offenders being sent to a
variety of juvenile justice facilities.
Children and young people in the
juvenile justice system
6.7
Young people may be in a juvenile justice centre for a
number of reasons. They could be on remand and awaiting a court appearance and
as such, have not been sentenced. Alternatively, they have been sentenced for
an offence.
6.8
Over the years, that children who had not committed
offences have often been placed in juvenile justice centres in Australia,
is well known, as noted in Forgotten
Australians:
Children could be placed in juvenile detention centres despite
not having committed a criminal offence...the mixing of welfare and criminal
cases in detention centres became a hallmark of dealing with young people in
the juvenile system...the by-product of such indiscriminate mixing of children in
detention centres 'bred' criminals.[603]
6.9
Submissions commented that nowadays young people are at
times placed in juvenile justice centres because there is nowhere else for them
or because of system failure, as the following excerpt demonstrates:
I was 13 when I went to stay at Minali for what was to have been
one night and turned into 8 and a half months of hell. The co-ordinator who
escorted me kept telling me to stop crying and shut up...[my caseworker said] I
would only be there for the night and to calm down. This caseworker left a week
later...and my case file was not handed on to anyone else, and as my computer
file is a secure file it is locked with a password and most people cannot
access it.[604]
Numbers and background of children
and young people in detention
6.10
Evidence indicates that there was a general decline in
the number of young people aged 10 to 17 years in juvenile detention in
1994-2003. At 30 June 1981,
there were 1352 young people detained in juvenile detention facilities, whereas
at 30 June 2003 only
640 juveniles were recorded as detained.[605]
The NSW Commissioner for Children and Young People noted that 'a greater awareness
of the limited rehabilitative power of detention for children and youth and
great legal protections for them are reflected in the declining numbers
detained'.[606]
6.11
The ALRC has noted that many children and young people
in the juvenile justice system have had extensive experience of the care and
protection system.[607] Youth Off The
Streets stated that 'the difficulties encountered by children and youth placed
within the child protection system (often shared clients with juvenile justice
involvement) are mirrored within the juvenile justice system'.[608] The NSW Commission for Children and
Young People cited 1993-1994 figures from the Community Services Commission
that males were 13 times more likely and females 35 times more likely to be
admitted to detention centres if they were state wards, than if they were not.[609] Centacare-Sydney noted studies
showing a strong link between the care system and the juvenile justice system
and a subsequent link between the juvenile and adult justice system.[610] Evidence from the WA Department of
Justice cited statistics showing a high likelihood of juvenile detainees later
becoming adult detainees in the justice system.[611]
6.12
Significant numbers of children who have come under the
care of the State and Territories' care and protection systems because of child
abuse and maltreatment, may have a 'direct path' to instances of juvenile
offending. An Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) study of 41 700
Queensland children who had been the subject of substantiated cases of child
maltreatment or classified as being 'at risk' found that children who have
suffered maltreatment, particularly physical abuse and neglect are more likely
to offend than other children. The AIC examined situations for indigenous and
non-indigenous offenders, taking account of factors such as gender, types of
abuse, children's and young people's ages when abused and children's particular
vulnerability. The study acknowledged that many incidents of maltreatment are
not reported or do not proceed to court (which has obvious effects on the
data). Its findings included that:
- children with one or more substantiated
maltreatment notifications were more likely (17 per cent) than children with no
substantiated maltreatment (10 per cent) to have a later offending record;
- children with out-of-home placements, likely to
be predictive of severity of maltreatment, are more likely to offend than
children who do not receive an out-of-home placement; and
- while maltreatment did not seem to account for
differences in male and female offending...more females than males experienced
persistent maltreatment or maltreatment only in adolescence.[612]
6.13
In the light of the above AIC research, the following
excerpt aptly describes the circumstances that often provide a pathway to
juvenile detention for young people:
If you were interested in creating a criminal you would have a
pretty good chance if you took a young person from a seriously troubled home,
put them into a series of foster or group homes, changed their primary worker
on a regular basis, let them run away from 'home' at an early age, allowed them
to drop out of school and enabled them to develop a drug and/alcohol addiction.
Your chances would improve if, somewhere in their lonely and painful existence,
they had been sexually, physically or emotionally abused. If in those few
instances that they sought help you would ensure that there were no accessible
services, that the workers they encountered were rushed and overwhelmed by
heavy caseloads, and that they would be seen first and foremost as trouble
rather than troubled, is it surprising then that these young people would
become perpetrators or victims of crime?[613]
6.14
As a 1990 South Australian study found, most of the
young people in custody on remand, came from a'...chaotic social background and
were without education and family support'.[614]
Experiences of children and young
people prior to detention
6.15
As has been widely documented, including in Forgotten Australians, many young people
in juvenile justice centres, had experienced situations of having no one to
turn to for help in the face of abuse, neglect, family tragedy or serious disruption
to their lives. The following example of a child's experiences of neglect and
family breakdown where the children were dispersed to institutions after their
mother died, exemplifies the many stories received about how children and young
people became involved in situations that led to their detention. Once in an
abusive and harsh institution and without proper care and attention, many
children got into further trouble:
...I was fostered out for a short time...I was sent to Mittagong
Boys' Home...Mr Saville was cruel, and he used to cane up the hand and across, he
opened my wrist on one caning...After absconding I was sent to Albion Street,
then to Glebe from Glebe to Mount Penang, a high security boys' home. At this
time I was about 13 years old...I was transferred to Muswellbrook Boys' Home...I
was not accepted by the inmates or the management...I ran away...next morning I was
sent back to Mount Penang, from where I was transferred to Tamworth Boys' Home,
which was a former prison for men...I was sent to Tamworth to be 'broken', that's
what it was used for by the child Welfare Department of NSW...I was about 14½ at
the time.[615]
6.16
The correlation between a child's life experiences and
entry to the justice system has been recognised and it would be worthwhile for
centre managers to know about young people's prior abuse and life circumstances
so that treatment and support can be provided. However, the Western Australian
Department of Justice emphasised the difficulties in obtaining such data
including young people's reluctance to disclose information, a lack of exchange
of information across departments and privacy rules.[616] Youth Off The Streets noted that:
Community placement and support options, and sentences in
detention often do not adequately take account of the young person's history of
abuse and the emotional problems driving their criminal behaviour.[617]
Indigenous children and young
people in juvenile justice centres
6.17
Many reports into child protection across Australia
have revealed that a significant proportion of detainees are people from
indigenous backgrounds. Figures from a 2003 ACT Legislative Assembly inquiry
showed that the Territory's crime trends are broadly on a par with national
trends and also noted, that as with other jurisdictions, indigenous youth are
grossly over represented in crime statistics.[618]
At February 2003, indigenous detainees represented 74 per cent of the 125
juvenile detainees aged 10-18 years in Western Australia.
In the same period there were 579 juvenile justice community-based court orders
for 541 distinct juveniles. Aboriginal males (41 per cent) had the highest
number of orders followed by non-Aboriginal males (29 per cent) with Aboriginal
and non-Aboriginal females recording lower rates.[619] The AIC noted that while the rate of
detention of indigenous young people had declined between 1994 and 2003, 'the
ratio of over-representation has remained relatively stable; with indigenous
persons aged 10 to 17 years still almost 20 times more likely to be in
detention than non-indigenous persons of the same age group'.[620] The large number of indigenous young
people in juvenile detention across Australia
varies according to the concentration of indigenous communities in particular
jurisdictions. As well, in some States such as Queensland
and Western Australia, it may be
necessary to place a young person facing charges in custody, in order to ensure
that he or she is taken to court.[621]
6.18
Various welfare agency workers outlined their first-hand
experience of the high numbers of indigenous young people in Australia's
juvenile detention centres:
...[in] the Brisbane Youth Detention Centre you would probably
find that 60 per cent of the young people there at this moment are of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent. We criminalise these young
people a lot earlier and we prolong their criminal career because of that.[622]
It is commonly recognised that young people from Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander and Culturally Linguistically Diverse backgrounds are
over represented in national statistics on school dropout rates and within the
care and criminal justice systems.[623]
6.19
The Corrections Health Service referred to a study of
inmates in NSW correctional centres, which included 235 indigenous inmates,
that found that indigenous people removed in childhood had almost double the
imprisonment rate of those not removed. The Service expressed concern that
while the study did not show why the children were removed, the fact that 82
per cent of the removed indigenous prisoners were removed before the age of 10
years, suggests that juvenile justice proceedings were not a primary reason.
The organisation also noted that the HREOC report, Bringing them home, documented the over-representation of
indigenous children in removals for welfare reasons which in most jurisdictions
were not subject to legal review.[624]
Children and young people with
disabilities in juvenile justice centres
6.20
A large percentage of juvenile detainees have a
disability. People with Disability Australia (PWD) noted many reports
indicating that children with disability, particularly those with mental
illness and/or intellectual disability are over-represented in the juvenile
justice system. PWD stated that in 1993 HREOC found that the lack of assessment,
treatment and services for children with mental illness means that many of
these children fall through a range of service systems and end up in the
juvenile justice system, 'consigned to incarceration rather than treatment'.[625] A 1997 South Australian Government
study, noted that many of the young people then entering that State's juvenile
justice system could be classified as intellectually impaired; 28 per cent were
of borderline or below average intellectual functioning.[626] PWD noted the links between systems
failures and the placement of young people with disabilities in juvenile
detention:
These findings link failures in the mental health, child
protection, disability and community service system with the increased risk of
children entering the juvenile justice system. These failures include lack of
support services, appropriate treatment and behaviour intervention programs,
family based care services and accommodation options; the use of inappropriate
and harmful service practices, such as physical restraint and medication; the
risk or actual occurrence of physical and sexual assault; and the reliance on
the police to resolve challenging behaviour. There is also evidence to suggest
that the lack of support services for children and appropriate policies and
practices to deal with challenging behaviour often leads services to rely on or
view juvenile justice facilities as 'providing a stable and secure care
environment and...as a solution to a complex problem'.
Once in the juvenile justice system, the emphasis is on
punishment of the crime and rehabilitation rather than on appropriate
assessment, intervention and support services. Many children with disability
are not even identified, which means their specific support needs are not
addressed. The design of facilities and the environment can also contribute to
a decreasing emotional and mental state.[627]
Longer term health issues
6.21
A study of young offenders in custody in 1988-1999 in Victoria
showed that such youth are likely to have many health problems, ranging from
mental and behavioural disorders to blood-borne infectious diseases including
Hepatitis C. One in 25 were dead within three years of leaving custody. The
mortality rates were almost 10 times higher in the young males than that of
their counterparts in the mainstream population and in females 40 times higher
than a comparison group. Drug overdoses accounted for deaths in about half the
instances while suicide and accidental injury made up the remainder.[628]
Treatment of children and young
people in detention
6.22
The Western Australian Department of Justice reported
very few cases of substantiated abuse of children and young people in that
State's centres.[629] The Department also
noted that:
I think it is fair to say that in juvenile custodial services we
deal with the most volatile of young people who are at the most crucial stage
of their lives. When they come to us, quite often in a state of great stress,
it can often be related to their own situation, their family situation or,
indeed, to drugs – which is the case with a large majority of the young people
we deal with...in caring for these young people, there are often conflictive
situations with staff where the staff have the responsibility to ensure that
these young people, who are often in conflict with each other on the outside,
do not pursue that on the inside of the detention centres. So there are, from
time to time, occasions where it is necessary to restrain a young person. In
those cases, if there is any thought that that restraint has not been carried
out in a proper way or any comment has been made by the young person regarding
that restraint, the internal investigations unit is requested to investigate
that matter.[630]
6.23
Senators were concerned at evidence presented by the
Western Australian Department of Justice that investigations of alleged sexual
or physical abuse are undertaken by the department rather than by an external
body. As well, a senator found it 'inconceivable' that in the last 50 or 60
years that there would have been no cases of mistreatment in Western Australian
juvenile detention centres.[631]
6.24
The Victorian Government submitted that in its young
offenders' corrective centres, punishments are expressly forbidden that involve
unreasonable physical force, corporal punishment, psychological pressure to
intimidate or humiliate, physical or emotional abuse and discrimination.
Punishments may entail withdrawal of privileges such as accessing television,
but not of rights such as having visitors, food or clothing. The Government
emphasised the 'numerous checks in the system' nowadays in its juvenile justice
centres:
As part of deliberate policy, the detention centres are not
closed systems. People from outside the centre regularly visit and provide a
range of services...recreation activities are provided by the YMCA, an external
agency provides health services at the Melbourne Juvenile Justice Centre and
Parkville Youth Residential Centre, volunteer visitors are encouraged and
mentors are provided through external agencies. Staff from the office of the Ombudsman
in Victoria
visit all detainees on a monthly basis. Each centre also has a chaplaincy
service. Detainees all have a community-based case manager. Those who have been
sentenced are regularly reviewed by the Youth Parole Board and most are paroled
to serve part of their sentence in the community under the guidance and
supervision of a parole officer.[632]
Experiences of children and young
people in detention
6.25
The Committee received many submissions describing
significant abuse and cruelty in juvenile justice centres. The following
information from a 43-year-old man provides some insight into his experience,
albeit 30 years ago:
I was 11 years old when I was first sentenced to nine months
detention at Mittagong Training
School for Boys. The second time I was sentenced
was at the age of 13 to again nine months at Daruk Training School for Boys at
Windsor near Penrith now the John Moroney
Jail...this "hell hole"...worse than a concentration camp...I was degraded,
tortured, starved and deprived of any human rights at the age of 13 like all
the other boys...[I tried to escape once]. I was hunted down like a wild animal,
being chased by screaming "store boys" with madness in their eyes,
like a contest to see who gets you first.[633]
6.26
This former detainee went on to describe many
experiences of a 13-year-old boy's torture such as having to stand or sit in
the one place for 24 hours at a time in extremely harsh conditions, wearing
very few clothes and with only a blackboard and a piece of chalk 'to amuse your
diminishing mind'. His other descriptions include:
You are checked every hour and must be standing at attention
with your face to the wall as soon as you hear the keys or you have a bucket of
cold water thrown over you. No blankets, no heating, just left there to
freeze....[or] lined up in a graveyard full of flies and forced to drink the next
cup in line whether it had a fly in it or not...[being] lined up with no clothes
on.[634]
Prevention and support measures for
children and young people
6.27
As noted above, young people in juvenile justice
detention may be on remand awaiting a court appearance and not sentenced, or
they may have been sentenced for an offence. An experienced advocate in
Victoria's juvenile justice system, Father Peter Norden, has noted that situations
where young people are incarcerated for non-serious offences but have not taken
the option for release on bail are often strong indicators of factors including
a young person's socio-economic status and homelessness. Such instances can
also be an illustration of a lack of community support services outside the
criminal justice system. Father Norden has emphasised that lessons might be
learnt from Victoria where the rate of indigenous detainees aged 10-17 years is
relatively low compared to the national rate, figures which Father Norden has
attributed to a wide network of alternative community services in that State.
These measures include school-based and housing support and accessible
community mental health diagnosis and treatment which are likely to have
positive results for the young person and the wider community.[635]
Intervention Programs
6.28
The WA Department of Justice submitted details of its
juvenile detention centres and programs to address offending behaviour and
substance abuse including those to break offending cycles, deal with anger and
take account of victims' situations. The department also cited mechanisms for
detainees to register complaints including processes that involve the Ombudsman
or Minister for Justice. The department's programs for indigenous children and
young people include supervised programs at Bell Spring, East Kimberly, and
Banana Well, West Kimberly, accommodating young people on bail with supervision
in their own communities as well as the Yandeyarra Regional Supervised Bail
Program in the Pilbara Region which is managed by the Mugarinya Community and
monitored by the community and the local Department of Justice. It aims to
minimise the incidence of the removal of young people from regional areas if
they are involved in the justice system.[636]
Diversionary, restorative justice
and conferencing programs
6.29
The following information illustrates the workings of
diversionary programs to assist in keeping young people out of detention.
Jurisdictions provide many options for dealing with young offenders both before
entering a custodial facility and while in custody. In Victoria,
a strong 'diversionary focus' exists in juvenile justice legislation. This
includes, where appropriate, diversion from court, diversion from statutory
orders, diversion from juvenile custody and diversion from the adult custodial
system. Police, through the police cautioning program, can divert young
offenders from the court system resulting in about only 25 per cent of police
contacts proceeding to court. Of those who appear in the Children's Court, only
about one in five are placed on orders that require statutory supervision.
Other forms of diversion in Victoria
include the Group Conferencing Program, court advice, the Youth Parole Board,
the Koori Justice Program, bail support and the legislatively-based sentencing
hierarchy.[637]
6.30
While the welfare and justice models of the past emphasised
rehabilitation and accountability for offenders, the restorative justice model
encourages offenders to accept responsibility for their criminal behaviour and
the consequences for other people. It focuses on the involvement of the victims
in dealing with the offence and subscribes to the rationale that offenders owe
a debt to the victim, for which restitution might be made.[638]
6.31
Restorative justice encompasses a variety of practices
at different stages of the criminal process, including diversion from court
prosecution, actions taken in parallel with court decisions, and meetings
between victims and offenders at any stage of the criminal process. Most
jurisdictions have introduced legislation incorporating conferencing in their
responses to youth crime.[639] For
example, the Juvenile Offenders Act 1997
(NSW) diverts all but the most serious offender from court and ultimately from
custody and provides opportunities for community groups and individuals to
participate in cautions and youth justice conferences, in ways that are rarely
present in formal legal processes. The Act also recognises the high
representation of indigenous young people in criminal justice settings and sets
out a graduated scheme of responses for increasingly serious offending
behaviour by children and young people.[640]
Restorative justice and
conferencing - effectiveness
6.32
There are various schools of thought about diversionary
programs. Critics may consider that such programs are aimed mainly at early to
mid-adolescent clients who essentially self select themselves into the
programs. Yet, other criminology professionals emphasise the importance of
early intervention assistance for families to help prevent young people's
gravitation to crime, particularly where at-risk families have ongoing
comprehensive support.[641]
6.33
The benefits of diverting young people from the courts via
cautioning and family group conferences include a reduction in trapping young
people with unblemished records in the juvenile justice system.[642] Youth justice conferences have also
been shown to be beneficial for young indigenous people, and their families and
victims including occasions where young offenders have worked on local projects
and connected with their Aboriginal cultural heritage and victims have been
given the opportunity to illustrate their stories and the harm which they have
experienced.[643]
6.34
However, the Bringing
them home report noted that Australian models fail to understand the
complexities of indigenous communities and ignore fundamentally the principle
of self determination and that the level of police involvement in most
conferencing is problematic for indigenous communities.[644] Other factors can affect indigenous
youth. For example, services identified in the conferences are not always
available especially in rural areas. At times, Aboriginal legal service lawyers
advise Aboriginal children not to admit to offences, resulting in Aboriginal
youth missing out on opportunities to be cautioned by police or respected
community members under the Young Offenders
Act 1997, which is contrary to the Act's aims of diverting young offenders
from the courts. Some indigenous youth are unable to complete outcome plans when
they have agreed to write apologies to victims but have not disclosed to the
conference their inability to read and write.[645]
6.35
An evaluation of the effects of diversionary
restorative justice conferences on repeat offenders in the Australian
Capital Territory undertaken in 1995-2000 showed positive
aspects. The Reintegrative Shaming Experiments (RISE) considered
recidivism among 1 300 cases and
compared the effects of standard court processing with that of restorative
justice intervention (diversionary conferencing) for: drink driving (over .08
blood alcohol content) by offenders at any age; juvenile property offending
with personal victims by offenders aged under 18 years; juvenile shoplifting
offences by offenders aged under 18 years detected by shop security staff; and
youth violent offences by offenders aged under 30 years.[646]
6.36
The evaluation drew on various theories including those
regarding the effects of formal court processes in stigmatising offenders and
subsequent difficulties for offenders' capacity to live responsibly in the
community. It took account of many factors including what might contribute to
the levels of re-offending by court-assigned and conference-assigned offenders
and the types of offenders who were included in the RISE tests. The study also
analysed repeat offending effects and before-after differences in offending
rates. The team factored in many elements and variables that could distort
findings or give false readings that could mask differences in the volume of
crime in the community.[647]
6.37
The study's results varied. Youth violence offenders
who were assigned to conference subsequently offended at substantially lower
levels (38 fewer offences per year per 100 offenders in the first year after
conference) than those assigned to the courts. This was not true for the other
experiments. For drink-driving offenders, a very small increase in detected
re-offending was found for the conferenced offenders, relative to court. Across
all experiments, conference-assigned offenders reported that their treatment
was more procedurally fair than did court-assigned offenders. However this
translated into higher levels of compliance with the law only in one out of
four offence categories, at least in the one year before and after standardised
comparison periods. This experiment concluded that the dynamics of each type of
offence may create a different emotional climate and basis for legitimacy of
legal intervention using court or conference processes. It substantively
concluded that restorative justice can work and even reduce crime by violent
offenders but it is not guaranteed to work for all offence types.[648] As well, Father Norden
has noted the ineffectiveness of punitive approaches in their ability to assist
young people to modify their behaviour, and has cited Victoria's
successful restorative responses that work towards social cohesion and the
recognition that young people's problematic behaviour is often an indication of
their social exclusion and disadvantage.[649]
Conclusion
6.38
As discussed above, many factors can precipitate a child
or young person's incarceration in juvenile detention. Many youth experience a
wide range of unjust and abusive situations which may lead to their gravitation
to criminal activities. Once in the system, problems can escalate and
circumstances come into play including the propensity to mix with already
seasoned offenders and learn further criminal activities. While in detention,
many young people experience serious health problems, miss out on an education
and start on the ever-spiralling road to negative events, which could see their
continuous return to detention or graduation to the adult prison system. Given
that initially the nature of juvenile offending tends to be for petty offences,
the results from an AIC study based on NSW data from 1991-1996 are particularly
pertinent. That study found that early intervention and supportive programs are
vital in stopping an escalation to more violent offences.[650]
6.39
That administrators are placing young people with
mental illness and disabilities in detention further compounds already serious
problems. Therefore, it would be logical to institute prevention programs to
ensure that children are not involved with the justice system in the first
place.
Given the links between
childhood abuse and social disadvantage and children's contact with the
juvenile justice system, a need exists for specific prevention and intervention
programs to assist families in this regard. As AIC research on the correlation
between childhood abuse and juvenile offending concluded:
Preventing child maltreatment in the first place is likely to
produce a larger reduction in offending. By directing attention to those
children who are maltreated and ensuring that the maltreatment is not repeated,
significant benefits in crime reduction and outcomes for children can also be
obtained. Understanding more about what maltreatment experiences lead to
offending would help direct crime prevention approaches to transition points in
the child's life or to risk factors so that greater success might be achieved.
It is anticipated that further analysis with the present data will make a
significant contribution to these important endeavours.[651]
6.40
Conferencing schemes may help to prevent such large
numbers of children and young people entering the system but warnings and cautions
are also significant. The development of culturally appropriate conferencing
programs for indigenous youth would have merit. However, diversionary criminal
justice measures alone cannot claim to 'control' or significantly reduce
juvenile crime.
6.41
The Committee notes the opinion of some experts in
diversionary justice programs that many measures including those that help to
improve the social capital in disadvantaged and dispossessed communities, will,
in the long run, be more effective and appropriate and that efforts are
required to keep young people in school and in programs that provide
opportunities for employment and activities that engender self esteem. For
Aboriginal young people and families and communities, measures that respect and
support their full participation in the framing and operation of these measures
at all levels are critical in addressing the over representation of Aboriginal
young people in criminal justice interventions.[652]
6.42
It is also critical to assist the health issues of
youth in juvenile justice centres, especially since many health problems would
be caused by inappropriate practices such as inmates using the same needles for
drugs. The Committee considers that programs to inform young people about
health issues are critical.
Recommendation 16
6.43 That the Commonwealth Government take note of the
merits of restorative justice programs in helping to keep young people out of
the juvenile justice system (and later gravitation to the adult prison system),
and increase its involvement, support and funding for such programs, to ensure
that the coverage of such programs across Australia is wider than is presently
the case. It is recommended that the Commonwealth Government introduce
restorative justice programs that would assist in reducing the high numbers of
indigenous youth in juvenile justice centres.
Children and young people in immigrant detention centres
6.44
The Committee received a number of submissions relating
to children and young people in immigration detention centres and expressing
concern at the potential for damaging outcomes for children in immigration
detention.[653]
6.45
The Committee noted that the Human Rights and Equal
Opportunity Commission (HREOC) was at the time conducting a National Inquiry
into Children in Immigration Detention and presented its report in April 2004.[654]