Health and legal leaders are alarmed about the Finocchiaro Government’s “tough on crime” political priorities in the Northern Territory, warning they are a “Widening the Gap” policy, which will traumatise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people, while failing to promote community safety.
Alison Barrett writes:
The Country Liberal Party Government’s plan to reduce the age of criminal responsibility to 10 years in the Northern Territory, together with other punitive policies, would undermine targets and outcomes of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, according to prominent health and legal experts.
Nerita Waight, CEO of the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service and Coalition of Peaks Representative for Victoria, told Croakey the CLP’s “tough on crime” approach had “no basis in evidence”, and would “only lead to more Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander children being criminalised and subject to further harm and trauma”.
Dr Robert Parker, President of the Australian Medical Association NT, said the CLP’s law and order policies would probably undermine the Closing the Gap work and targets. Locking kids up leads to a lifetime of crime, he said.
One of the targets of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap is to reduce the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people (10-17 years) in detention by at least 30 percent by 2031.
Indigenous young people are over-represented in detention across the country, but more so in the NT.
The latest figures from the Productivity Commission show that in 2022-23, the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people (10-17 years) in detention was 29.8 per 10,000 young people in the population. This compares with 1.1 per 10,000 non Indigenous young people.
In the NT, the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people in detention in 2022-23 was 42.9 per 10,000 young people, with rates worsening since 2018-19.
Law and order
Country Liberal Party leader Lia Finocchiaro was sworn in as Chief Minister on 28 August, alongside Deputy Chief Minister Gerard Maley. They will each hold 20 portfolios in the interim before the full ministry is announced next week.
With 66 percent of the vote counted at time of publication, CLP has 16 seats, Labor has four, two are uncertain (Fannie Bay and Nightcliff), and three went to independent candidates.
The day after the election, the Chief Minister met with the Department of the Chief Minister and Cabinet CEO, Ken Davies, and Police Commissioner Michael Murphy – “to outline the immediate work that must being to make Territorians safe. Law and order is the number one issue”.
Finocchiaro said the reforms would be delivered in the first week of the new Parliament, in October. These included:
- Declan’s Law – Bail Amendment Bill, which includes criminalising bail breaches
- Ram raid legislation
- Reducing the criminal age of responsibility
- Minimum mandatory sentences for assaulting frontline workers.
Nerita Waight said the CLP’s approach would exacerbate youth detention rates, as well as the inhumane conditions that children are subject to while incarcerated in the NT due to the structural racism in police, court and prison systems.
She urged the NT Government, as well as all governments, to “prioritise Aboriginal-led preventative, early intervention services and holistic supports that are culturally-safe and actually work to address the underlying issues that lead to young peoples’ offending behaviour”.
Medical perspectives
The day before the NT election, the Australian Medical Association and the Law Council issued a joint statement supporting an Australian Human Rights Commission report into youth justice, whose recommendations include raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 14.
AMA President Professor Steve Robson said criminalising the behaviour of young and vulnerable children creates a vicious cycle of disadvantage and increases the likelihood of ongoing experiences within the legal system.
The AMA and the Law Council expressed concern about the increasing politicisation of youth justice reform, including steps to walk back existing commitments to raise the age of criminal responsibility in some jurisdictions.
The “tough on youth crime” stance in states and territories needs to be reframed to a position that is informed by the available evidence, human rights, focusing on child health, emotional wellbeing and supporting alternatives to custody, the joint statement said.
Measures which divert an offending child away from the criminal justice system are proven to be far more effective at keeping communities safe by reducing the chances of repeat offending, said the statement.
Dr Robert Parker told Croakey that the AMA’s position is to raise the age of criminal responsibility. “The health evidence is that lowering the age has significant health impacts,” he said.
However, addressing youth crime in the NT is a very complex issue, Parker said, with significant health and social problems, including large rates of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) and generational trauma but no available funds.
The ideal thing to do would be to raise the age of criminal responsibility and have properly funded rehabilitation programs to address trauma and alcohol-related conditions, “so they [young people] can have some meaningful activity in society”, but he said the Government hasn’t got that money.
The NT has a $11 billion deficit, and the health system is “under real strain”, he said.
The Royal Australasian College of Physicians declined to comment for this article; however, they have previously stated their support for raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14 years.
Address social determinants
Karl Briscoe, Chair of the National Health Leadership Forum and CEO of NAATSIHWP, said that law and order responses must work in conjunction with increased investment in the interventions that address the drivers of criminal behaviour.
“Partnership and shared decision-making arrangements were central to the development of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap and are intrinsic to the outcomes being sought under each Priority Reform Area,” he said.
A focus on law and order approaches won’t solve the concerns around public and community safety, he added.
Dr Rosalie Schultz, a GP and public health physician based in Mparntwe/ Alice Springs, echoed Briscoe’s sentiments on the importance of addressing the social determinants of health.
“Addressing the social determinants of health through joined up policy has been recognised by NT’s Aboriginal groups and the Aboriginal Peak Organisations NT alliance as an opportunity for coordinated Indigenous advocacy across sectors,” she said.
Schultz – also a member of the Public Health Association of Australia and Doctors for the Environment Australia – hopes that the new Government listens to this key constituency, “even as they appease community concerns about being tough on crime”.
Schultz pointed to United Nations Human Rights Council’s concerns about the “very low age of criminal responsibility in Australia”.
Other commentary
Commenting on X/Twitter, many experts raised concerns. Professor Nick Talley, a senior physician and researcher, described the plan to reduce the age of criminal responsibility as “morally bankrupt” and ineffective.
Professor Bronwyn Fredericks, a senior researcher in Aboriginal health and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous Engagement) at the University of Queensland, warned that the move would “result in poorer long term outcomes for the NT and Australia”. It was “a backward step, not a solution,” she said.
Leading psychiatrist Professor Pat McGorry raised concerns about the racist impacts and said it was a “Widening the Gap” policy.
ANTAR said: “The evidence is clear, criminalising and incarcerating children does not make the community safer in any way. The CLP has stoked fear and inflamed divisions for political gain – this path only leads to more lives devastated and lost.”
Children’s rights and futures at risk
Amnesty International warned the CLP Government that it risked breaching human rights law with its plans to lower the age of criminal responsibility as well as reintroduce the outlawed use of spithoods on children.
“Lowering the age of criminal responsibility and using methods of torture is a serious breach of children’s rights,” said Kacey Teerman, Amnesty International Australia’s Indigenous Rights Campaigner.
“It is unconscionable that the newly elected CLP Government has moved to reintroduce a practice of torture against children, and as their first order of business no less.”
Prevention, early intervention and protecting children’s rights at all stages of the system are vital, according to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which warns that exposure to the criminal justice system has been demonstrated to cause harm to children, limiting their chances of becoming responsible adults.
Additionally, “prevalence of crime committed by children tends to decrease after the adoption of systems in line with” principles of treating children in a “manner consistent with the promotion of the child’s sense of dignity and worth”.
The Convention encourages state parties to take note of recent scientific findings, and to increase their minimum age of criminal responsibility to at least 14 years.
Jared Sharp, Principal Legal Officer at North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency, told the National Indigenous Times this week that the “tough on crime” policies would disproportionately impact Aboriginal children without making the community safer.
“The policies could prove counterproductive,” he said, given the evidence showing that children who are first imprisoned between 10 and 12 years of age are “twice as likely to reoffend than those who are sentence as young adults”.
The Northern Territory raised the age to 12 in August 2023 “following substantial analysis and consultation around the best way to handle young children who come into contact with the justice system and there is no evidence that this needs to be reversed,” Sharp said.
In Queensland and Victoria
The results of the NT election have implications for the Queensland election in October. Parker suspects that as crime is also a “really big issue in Queensland”, similar outcomes will result.
Waight said that “it’s disappointing, but not surprising, to see Queensland Opposition Leader David Crisafulli fall prey to the agenda of conservative media outlets and police forces in the pursuit of political success”.
Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows that youth offending rates have been trending downward in most states over the last decade.
“The ‘youth crime wave’ is media narrative, not reality,” Waight said.
Meanwhile, the Victorian Government has passed the Youth Justice Bill this week that will “deliver tough consequences for repeat and serious offenders”, as well as providing appropriate measures to keep children out of the justice system.
Waight told Croakey that while the law is not perfect, it is “a step in the right direction towards a future where our children have the resources to self-determine their futures, and build a better life for themselves and their families”.
She said that Aboriginal communities, as well as Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations, VALS and the Aboriginal Justice Caucus, have worked “really hard for years to develop this Bill” and hopes that it is effective in prioritising preventative, early intervention services and holistic supports for young people.
While backstepping on their previous promise to raise the age of criminality to 14, the law raises the age of criminality to 12, with the Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) saying this is a missed opportunity to “get youth justice reform right”.
However, HRLC agree that the law overall is a step in the right direction and “opportunity to improve the status quo”.
They say the “passing of the laws is testament to the sustained advocacy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, human rights, social services, health and youth groups over the past five years”.
Further reading
See Croakey’s extensive coverage of the 2024 NT election here.
New report proposes transforming Australia’s approach to child justice and wellbeing, by Marie McInerney at Croakey
When children’s wellbeing becomes a political football, it’s time to change the game, by Tabitha Lean and Debbie Kilroy
See Croakey’s archive of articles on justice and health
