Page 2008 - Week 07 - Thursday, 24 June 2021
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The paper also makes the point that these issues can result in lack of capacity for those children to be able to engage properly in the criminal justice system and necessarily understand what is happening. That can mean that they are more likely to plead guilty, they are more likely to say what they think the people they are speaking to want them to say—whether that is police or their lawyers—and may not be able to keep track of court proceedings.
We also know that many young people who engage in harmful behaviours have a background of trauma. The best response for those young people to address their behaviours is not a punitive response but one that addresses the underlying issues, the cause of why they are acting out and behaving in the way they are. Again, it is not about there being no consequences of young people’s disruptive and difficult actions; it is about those responses being appropriate for the young person and ultimately the best responses to keep the community safe.
We are not talking about a large number of young people in the ACT who are engaged in the criminal justice system under the age of 14. Over the last five years the largest number of youth justice supervision orders that were managed by the Community Services Directorate for young people in this age group in any one year was 15. It is important to recognise that does not necessarily mean 15 young people; young people may be subject to multiple orders in a year. So the people of this age engaged in the youth justice system is a very small number. It is important to recognise that that number does not include young people in the community being supervised by their parents who might have been involved in the justice system and received a fine or diverted to other services in the community. But we are talking about a relatively small number of young people and we have the capacity to support those young people.
I want to take the opportunity to recognise that in many instances we are already providing really comprehensive case management for many young people of this age who come into contact with the youth justice system. It is unfortunate that in some cases it is only when they come into contact with the youth justice system that those really strong wraparound supports are available and they get access to services that they need—they get the diversionary response.
Part of the work that needs to be done is to understand, without that engagement in the criminal justice system, how we identify those young people early, how we identify those problematic behaviours and how we put a support around those young people to ensure we are not just delaying their engagement in the justice system to when they are older but we are still providing that intensive therapeutic response that sees them change their life trajectory and genuinely be diverted from engagement with the criminal justice system in the future.
We have already been making investments in this regard. The Community Services Directorate and our partners do an incredible job in supporting some of our most complex and difficult young people. Over the last couple of years we have made investments at multiple stages in the system. Last year my colleague the then Attorney-General Mr Ramsay made an investment in a trial of functional family
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