Victorian Labor’s pre-election pledge to detain children for up to 12 months for lower-level offences such as theft, vandalism and property damage will push more children into a youth detention system that has never delivered on its promise of rehabilitation, the Justice Reform Initiative has warned.
Under the $204 million plan announced yesterday, children who would currently receive community-based supervision could instead be sentenced to “youth rehabilitation detention” under a new Mandatory Therapeutic Order, held around the clock in secure youth justice facilities including Malmsbury. Labor has said the program would begin with almost 500 places over two years and then scale up.
Justice Reform Initiative Executive Director Dr Mindy Sotiri said the suggested approach would cause enormous harm and fail to improve community safety.
“Whatever you think about the use of prisons for children in Australia, they have never been rehabilitative. The evidence on this is very clear and it has been for decades,” Dr Sotiri said.
“The reduction of offending is already the central ambition of youth justice in Victoria. There is nothing new in policy approaches claiming to have a rehabilitative approach to detention – the reality is that it doesn’t work.
“It doesn’t matter whether you call it tough love, rehabilitative detention or prison – locking children up in our current system will not reduce reoffending. The majority of children who leave sentenced detention return to prison within 12 months. This is not going to change by increasing the number of children being locked up or increasing the length of the time they spend in detention.
“Incarcerating children does not reduce the risk of reoffending, partly because it doesn’t address the reasons why children end up in detention in the first place, and partly because detention environments in Australia are enormously harmful for children. The research is very clear that the experience of incarceration makes it makes it more likely, rather than less likely, that children will go on to reoffend. Detention disrupts family connection, education, housing, and almost every other protective factor. Wrapping a detention order in the language of therapy does not overcome that harm.”
Dr Sotiri said the plan would significantly widen the net of youth detention by targeting children whose offending is at the lower end of seriousness.
“These are children who have been involved in theft, vandalism and minor assaults. Many of them will be dealing with drug and alcohol issues, mental health concerns, disrupted schooling and unstable housing. Taking those children out of the community and locking them up for 12 months is a dramatically disproportionate response, and the evidence tells us it will make it more likely, rather than less likely, that they go on to commit more serious offences,” she said.
“The earlier a child is locked up, the more likely they are to cycle in and out of the justice system for years to come. A policy that sends hundreds of children charged with lower-level offences into detention every year risks creating the very pathway into violent crime the Government says it wants to prevent.
“Nobody disputes the fact that the children who come into contact with the justice system are also the children who need the most intensive support, and the Government is right that many of them are not getting it. But the answer is to invest in that support in the community, where the evidence shows it is most effective, at a fraction of the cost of detention.
“Similarly, the Liberals’ commitment to community-based early intervention is welcome, but it will be undermined by a sentencing and bail regime designed to put more children in custody. The Liberals’ ‘Adult Crime, Adult Time’ policy would take Victoria further down the path Queensland has already shown to be a failure with overcrowded youth detention centres and no evidence that communities are any safer. Victoria should be learning from that experience and avoiding repeating it.”
The Productivity Commission’s latest data shows that 67% of children released from detention in Victoria returned to sentenced supervision within 12 months.
Dr Sotiri called on all parties to commit to investing in what actually reduces offending.
“Whichever party forms government after 28 November, we urge them to put the money they have earmarked for detention into diversion, bail support, intensive family support and First Nations-led programs in the community. That is how we build safer communities over the long term.”
The Justice Reform Initiative has published a series of position papers on key reform areas including youth justice, as well as reports outlining the success of evidence-based alternatives to prison.
About us:
The Initiative respectfully acknowledges and supports the current and longstanding efforts of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to reduce the numbers of Indigenous people incarcerated in Australia and, importantly, the leadership role which Indigenous-led organisations continue to play on this issue. We also acknowledge the work of many other individuals and organisations seeking change, such as those focused on the rate of imprisonment for women, people with mental health issues, people with disability and others.
