Jailing is failing: youth prison numbers under scrutiny

Perth Now

25-06-2025

"Tough on crime" reforms across Australia are proving to be tough on Aboriginal people, according to advocates examining rising incarceration rates.
A two-day Reintegration Puzzle Conference in Mparntwe/Alice Springs is being held as the Northern Territory government unrolls new measures in a $1.5 billion law and order crackdown.
But punitive approaches undermine children's human rights and makes contact with the justice system for vulnerable young people more likely, the NT Children's Commissioner Shahleena Musk says.
In her jurisdiction, 85 per cent of children who had previously spent time in custody were returned to prison within 12 months, Ms Musk said.
"If you're thinking sending a kid to prison will teach them a lesson that will stop them from committing a crime, well, the data shows otherwise," she told AAP.
Ms Musk and fellow children's guardians and commissioners from across Australia are urging federal, state and territory governments to address a "disturbing erosion of hard-won safeguards" as tougher youth crime legislation is introduced across the nation.
"These children don't belong in the justice system, which is punitive, focused on control and largely a product of harmful, custodial conditions like the use of restraint, like separation and isolation practices," Ms Musk said.
In Queensland, children as young as 10 can face adult jail time for a range of offences after the state government passed its second tranche of controversial youth crime laws.
The NT government recently passed tougher bail laws, leading to a surge in the territory's prison population.
The territory also plans to retrain dozens of public housing and transit officers as police public safety officers armed with guns, a move slammed by Indigenous and legal advocacy groups.
Tougher bail laws have also been introduced in Victoria and NSW, despite warnings from Aboriginal legal services more Indigenous young people would be imprisoned.
The NT's incarceration rate is reportedly the second-highest in the world, only behind El Salvador, Justice Reform Initiative chair Robert Tickner says.
"Almost unbelievably, governments in other parts of the country appear to be racing to catch up," he said in a statement.
Tyson Carmody, the founder and director of Kings Narrative, a support service for Aboriginal men, said punitive policies were not a solution.
"With the high rates of incarceration of Aboriginal adults and young people, the 'tough on crime' approach feels too much like a 'tough on Aboriginal people' approach," he said.
Catherine Liddle, chief executive for SNAICC, the peak body for Indigenous children, said criminalising young people does not address crime rates or create safer communities.
"The evidence is very clear that the younger a child is when they are locked up, the more likely it is that they will have ongoing criminal justice system involvement," she said.
Ms Liddle said investment in early intervention, prevention and diversion programs was proven to interrupt the cycle of crime and imprisonment.