Introduction by Croakey: Australia’s National Children’s Commissioner is urging a new national approach to child justice and an end to “tough on youth crime” narratives that defy evidence and inflict further harm on children and the broader community.
Commissioner Anne Hollonds’ latest report – titled ‘Help way earlier!’: How Australia can transform child justice to improve safety and wellbeing – comes as states and territories like Victoria, Queensland and the Northern Territory continue to fall prey to sensationalist reporting on youth crime.
The 190-page report is packed with information on the impact of the social determinants of justice and the role of racism, poverty and trauma in child justice.
It begs the question: how much more evidence do governments need to transform the way they respond to vulnerable children and young people?
Marie McInerney writes:
Establishing a National Taskforce for reform of child justice, a Federal Minister for Children, a Ministerial Council for Child Wellbeing and a National Children’s Act are urgent priorities to ensure children’s human rights and safety are being upheld in Australia, according to National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds.
These are some of the 24 recommendations from Hollonds’ recent inquiry into child justice in Australia, published in her report — ‘Help way earlier!’: How Australia can transform child justice to improve safety and wellbeing, which was tabled in Parliament this week.
The focus is on elevating child justice and wellbeing to be a national priority, coordinating action across states and territories, and ensuring reform of child justice systems is based on evidence and human rights.
“Why is child safety not a current [Federal] Cabinet priority?” Hollonds asked.
Catherine Liddle, CEO of SNAICC – National peak body for Indigenous children, SNAICC, told the National Indigenous Times that “governments must admit that current systems are failing and instead invest in early intervention, and community-led programs”.
Centring their voices
To ensure that their voices were “at the centre” of her inquiry, Hollonds met with 150 children and young people whose lives had intersected with the criminal justice system and “been marred by systemic failure” to support their needs.
Nearly a third were currently in detention, many had been in detention twice. Reflecting their tragic, disproportionate rate of incarceration, most were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people.
It was, Hollonds says, a “powerful and often heart-breaking” experience to see and hear children who feel “shunned by society”, amid evidence of “the most egregious breaches of human rights in this country”, particularly in their experiences of detention.
Talking to ABC Radio this week after tabling the report in Parliament, she pointed to graphic videos, reported by Guardian Australia and SBS The Feed, of children detained in Queensland’s adult police watch houses.
Her report cites Queensland Magistrate Eoin Mac Giolla Ri, describing the unsatisfactory conditions of watch houses, when considering a bail application for a 15-year-old Aboriginal boy with FASD and an acquired brain injury. He had been detained at a Mt Isa watch house for the last 15 days:
It suffices to say that conditions in watch houses are harsh and that adult detainees are often drunk, abusive, psychotic or suicidal. Although children may be kept in separate cells, those cells are usually open to the sights and sounds of the watchhouse. Equally, there is no facility to deliver education or the therapeutic interventions that are sometimes available in detention centres.”
What had been most gruelling in developing the report, Hollonds said, was meeting children as young as 13 and 14, who had “really no hope for the future”.
“By then they were already resigned that their life was terrible,” she said. “The light had gone out of their eyes.”
And yet, she said, the report shows that these experiences that distress and debilitate so many young people are “preventable problems of our own making”.
“We know that if we criminalise children at this age, they are more likely to go on to commit more crimes. We’re not rehabilitating them and we’re not keeping the community safer.”
Her overall message, she says, is:
We’ve got this wrong by focusing on the need to be tougher and tougher at the justice end….and we’ve got to transform our approach.”
Urges national approach
Acknowledging racism, poverty and systemic issues behind the statistics, the report says the treatment of children in the criminal justice system, some as young as 10 years old, is “one of the most urgent human rights issues facing Australia”.
Yet, it says Australia continually fails to implement evidence-based reforms to child justice systems which would reduce offending and make communities safer.
“Instead, our governments – swayed by populist ‘tough on crime’ rhetoric fanned by sensationalist media reporting of child offending – are taking the opposite approach with children being traumatised, brutalised and criminalised,” Hollonds said, noting it costs over $1 million a year to keep a young person detained.
Victoria has offered a recent case study on this, condemned by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and health groups for its backflip on its pledge to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14, following a scare campaign run by tabloid media.
In the lead up to this weekend’s Northern Territory poll, and the upcoming October state election in Queensland, health leaders and children’s rights advocates have been urging politicians to address the root causes for youth becoming involved in the criminal justice system, and to abandon “tough on crime” electioneering.
As Croakey has previously reported, NT opposition leader Lia Finocchiaro has said if elected, the Country Liberal Party will, among other “tough on crime” policies, lower the age of criminal responsibility – she has previously said to 10 years – “so that young people and their parents can be held accountable for their crimes”.
Both major parties have outlined plans for new women’s prisons in the Territory, and NT Labor was criticised by social service and children advocate groups for its focus on prisons and policing in its May 2024 pre-election budget.
Queensland Opposition Leader David Crisafull has announced an “Adult Crime, Adult Time” plan, where young people would receive the same sentences as adults on serious crimes including murder, manslaughter, home and business break-ins and vehicle theft.
Liddle said that as elections across State, Territory and Federal governments draw nearer, communities and organisations working with children start “bracing for the hits” as youth crime is politicised.
“What we see is our children picked up and kicked from pillar to post as we talk about more incarceration, more removals, instead of what we really need to be doing, and that is putting our efforts into creating safe communities and safe environments.”
The Productivity Commission’s latest Annual Data Compilation Report (ADCR) on the National Agreement on Closing the Gap this week showed that Australia is going backward on its youth justice target, tracking an increase in the rate of young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in detention.
In a key section focused on the needs of First Nations children and communities, the Children’s Commissioner’s report quotes one stakeholder as saying:
It is too easy to find examples of government decisions that contradict commitments in the Agreement, that do not reflect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s priorities and perspectives and that exacerbate, rather than remedy, disadvantage and discrimination. This is particularly obvious in youth justice systems.”
Hollonds said a big problem is that the states and territories manage child protection and justice by themselves, with the Federal Government having no role or accountability.
The report has a big focus on the social determinants of health, with Hollonds saying that, like everyone else, children have a right to housing, food, healthcare and education and to live in safety – “but the failures in our health, education and social services systems have created an ‘epidemic’ of unmet needs”.
Public health approach
It urges a “public health approach” to children’s involvement with the criminal justice system: focusing on prevention and early intervention, addressing the “social determinants of crime”, and meeting the basic needs of children, their families and communities, including in health, education, and social services such as housing and income security.
It also takes on board long-running calls from justice advocates for governments to prohibit solitary confinement practices in child detention facilities, to raise the age of criminal responsibility in all jurisdictions to 14 years and implement nationally consistent standards for monitoring detention facilities for children.
In a section on healthcare, the report says Australia’s most vulnerable children are currently missing out on basic healthcare before and during their contact with the justice systems, with children who are detained in police watch houses and youth detention facilities “particularly at risk”.
Stakeholders advocated that health services for First Nations children in justice settings be provided by Aboriginal community controlled organisations, and called for expanded access to Medicare, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) for all children who are incarcerated.
“Our communities will not be safer if we just keep punishing and locking up children who have complex needs caused by poverty, homelessness, disability, health and mental health issues, domestic, family and sexual violence, systemic racism and intergenerational trauma,” it says.
The report says many inquiries, including Royal Commissions, have focused on the need for prevention and early intervention in both child justice and child protection systems, but responses have been “piecemeal, uncoordinated and inadequate”.
“Despite evidence of the social determinants that are the root causes of offending behaviour, policy responses to these children are often only tinkering with the symptoms, with tougher policing, stricter bail laws, and incarceration,” it said.
It points to multiple barriers that have stood in the way of child rights and evidence-based reform including systemic racism; the fragmented way our governments operate; limited workforce capacity; lack of political commitment to evidence-based reform; pervasive “tough on crime” rhetoric; and persistent failure to make child wellbeing a national priority.
You can read this summary of the report and watch the Commissioner’s video for children.
From X
Crisis supports
13YARN is a crisis support line for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Available 24/7. No shame, no judgement, safe place to yarn.
Phone 13 92 76
Kids Helpline provides free, private and confidential 24/7 phone and online counselling service for young people between the ages of 5 and 25.
Phone: 1800 551 800
Lifeline provides free suicide and mental health crisis support for all Australians.
Phone: 13 11 14
Beyond Blue provides free telephone and online counselling services 24/7 for everyone in Australia.
Phone: 1300 224 636
1800 RESPECT provides confidential sexual assault and family and domestic violence counselling via phone and webchat. Available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Phone: 1800 737 732
See Croakey’s archive of articles on children and youth health
