Page 528 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 21 February 2012
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
assists with accommodation, while the Victorian central after-hours and bail placement service supports facilitation of bail as a diversion from remand for young people arrested out of normal court hours.
Under police standing orders in Victoria police must notify the central after-hours and bail placement service when they are considering remand of a young person and allow the young person to be in contact with a worker from the organisation. In this system, remand is considered a last resort, and if offenders have access to a service to secure bail and overcome issues preventing bail—for example, finding accommodation—rates of youths on remand and in prison will be greatly decreased. It is my understanding that most of the young people who will need this service in the ACT are children who are involved with the care and protection system or are being breached by accommodation providers.
While the ACT government funds community agencies to provide a range of accommodation support options for young people, in the recent paper, “Towards a diversionary framework”, the ACT government states that it appears demand for accommodation exceeds supply for young people with a range of complex needs and is partly or wholly contributing to some young people being remanded to the Bimberi Youth Justice Centre. This view was also backed up in the Human Rights Commission report.
This paper also noted that a service model which provides a small amount of additional crisis accommodation beds could reduce the number of young people remanded to Bimberi. This service model involves a small number of crisis accommodation beds, such as four to six beds, coordination with existing service providers and intensive case work and longer term accommodation brokerage and support.
Another program proving very successful in the UK is youth offending teams. The success of the program has hinged on a significant financial and social investment into prevention of crime and reoffending. The number of young people aged between 10 and 17 receiving their first reprimand, warning or conviction in England and Wales stood at 100,210 in 2007-08 compared with 79,260 in 2008-09, a decrease of approximately 21 per cent. There have been significant decreases in reoffending rates, and incarceration rates have fallen substantially. These results are from the investment and prevention funding that began in 2003.
In the example of another program, the young offending program, when a young person is arrested, the on-call youth worker conducts an assessment which considers the gravity of the offence, where the young person resides, offending history and age. From here the young person is placed in one of three streams. The early diversion category is when the young person has committed a relatively minor crime. In this stream the protective and risk factors are verified and young people are released to family or carers.
The second stream involves a joint risk assessment, and this is when a moderate offence has been committed. A rapid assessment is conducted and includes a sweep of databases and assessments to check for risk and protective factors. This information is
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video