Page 2774 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 6 June 2012
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young people were remanded in Bimberi and, of those, 39 were for the charge of “against justice procedure and government operations”. This charge most commonly refers to breaches of bail and bond.
This clearly illustrates that, whilst 20 young people may have breached their bail conditions by committing a fresh offence and were subsequently remanded in Bimberi, 39 were most likely remanded for a short period for breaching bail and community-based orders, not for committing any other or new offences.
The bill would create consistency across various acts that deal with children’s interactions with the criminal justice system. This amendment to the Bail Act is intended to facilitate a reduction in remand periods for children in the ACT in cases where remand periods would be far more detrimental than a community-based response.
Repeated exposure to the criminal justice system has been shown time and time again to have negative outcomes for children, for young people and ultimately for the whole community. It is costly, ineffective and counter to local, national and international research. So the community should quite rightly question if it is the best use of police and government resources and further question if this is the best response we can provide to these children.
Today the ACT Greens are acting to prevent completely unnecessary and counterproductive remand periods for children and young people. I had hoped that all parties would support this bill and by doing so ensure that the best interests of vulnerable children and young people were considered paramount, especially those engaged in our youth justice system. I am, therefore, very disappointed that the Labor Party and the Canberra Liberals will not be supporting this bill. Mrs Dunne recently, when I gave a briefing on the issue, said she understood that the proposed amendments were quite straightforward and she did not have an issue with them, but that obviously has not been the final result of discussions within the Canberra Liberals.
We need to look at how we can improve the diversionary framework. We need to see how we can ensure that we have more people being diverted out of the system. We do have restorative justice. We do have a range of other programs. The drug court is up as well. But we need to get serious about the diversion programs. As I said, that diversionary framework paper went out in February of last year, so we are nearly 18 months down the track.
It could be said that everything is waiting on the justice blueprint, but I think there are things that we could be moving forward with. Obviously the government had started to move forward. If they were going to put together a paper and put it out there, they must have had some idea of where they could move and what sort of time line they would like to move on, on this. I am a little concerned, because I think the blueprint was scheduled to come out mid this year. We are now looking at later this year. I do not want it to be rushed; I do want a proper job to be done. In fact part of that was putting through the motion to ensure that experts on issues around juvenile justice, around trauma of children and young people and so forth, would be able to participate in that process. To have that expert advice and input will certainly help what comes out the other end, but I do think it is important that we get moving.
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