Page 4137 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 22 October 2019
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I have focused my comments on our detention centre, but the problems extend far beyond the walls of Bimberi. Those opposite have a commitment on paper to divert young offenders away from the courts, but at the same time the Barr government has woefully underfunded diversion options. Police officers and magistrates in the Children’s Court who wish to refer young offenders directly into diversion programs know that in many cases those young people will instead just be added to very long waiting lists.
By any account, this is not a rehabilitative youth justice system. I fully expect the minister to tell us all that it is; she will use nice words when she does so, but the reality is that youth, parents, community service providers, police, magistrates and youth workers all know that our youth justice system is failing.
Thankfully not all young people are slipping through the cracks; some of them are getting the help they need but far too many are not. Those paying the price are the young people themselves, their families and the community at large. When we miss the opportunity to genuinely help a young offender, we risk creating a wounded adult who will carry lifelong trauma. We risk creating repeat offenders whose actions will burden our community and we end up with an overcrowded jail.
We can and should be doing much better. As the royal commission into youth detention in the Northern Territory pointed out, Scotland has a population more than 12 times greater than the ACT’s and yet they have only 24 young offenders in secure detention. If we replicated this kind of success in Canberra we would have only one or two young people in Bimberi. Instead we have a youth detention facility containing both sentenced detainees and remandees who are experiencing long lockdowns and isolation, lacking face-to-face learning opportunities and on occasion lacking access to their families. We have waiting lists for intensive, diversionary programs for young offenders who in many cases continue to offend, increasing the likelihood that this will become a persistent pattern in their lives.
In contrast, a genuinely rehabilitative youth justice system provides a range of diversions and dispositional alternatives, especially community-based and family-centred programs that are proven to work with young people who have serious problems. Such an expanded area of alternatives gives magistrates better options for matching youth needs and the degree of supervision needed with effective options.
According to the Harvard University report, research confirms that no intervention is more effective when delivered in an institutional setting then when delivered in a community-based one. Where possible evidence-based family intervention models should be emphasised because, quoting the Harvard report again, a family is the best place for kids.
When it is necessary to keep young offenders in a secure facility, this facility should be characterised by high quality, rigorous programs throughout the day. This programming should be designed to boost young people’s educational, social and emotional development. This is simply not possible when poor planning and poor execution on the part of this territory’s current government have resulted in a
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