Sending kids to jail doesn't make our communities safer

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Locking kids up doesn't work. It hasn't worked in the past and it won't work now. We have so much proof that it doesn't work yet we still keep doing it.

Can someone please explain this to me?

We all need to get behind the organisations calling for the federal government to pull itself together and commit to a national emergency summit on youth justice. There are more than 200 groups across the country which have signed an open letter asking Anthony Albanese to get his act together (they are more diplomatic than me. Good on them). A federal government spokesperson responded to the open letter saying that only states and territories can set justice policies. Eye roll.

The acting chair of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services Nerita Waight said state and territory governments across the country are actively pursuing punitive policies that are driving the mass incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Too right. That's what the figures are telling us.

"Right now, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are being criminalised and imprisoned at alarming rates. This is because state and territory governments are pursuing policies that criminalise children and make communities more dangerous - all in the name of political point-scoring."

Ohmigod, you just have to read the tragic story of Cleveland Dodd to know she is 100 per cent correct. He took his own life in a WA prison after months in solitary confinement. He was just 16 years old. The WA Coroner described the inquest into Cleveland's death this way: "The harrowing evidence I heard . . . has made this inquest the saddest I have presided over," he told the court.

And if one devastating anecdote doesn't persuade you, try these stats for size, all part of the Australian Human Rights Commission's work on juvenile injustice. National Children's Commissioner Deb Tsorbaris, building on the work of her predecessor Anne Hollonds, shares horrific numbers.

More than 40 per cent of the kids aged between 10 and 17 who were in youth justice supervision between 2000 and 2024 ended up back in juvie before they turned 18. Then she tells me that of children and young people aged between 10 and 16 in the year ending June 2023 and released from detention, nearly 85 per cent return within 12 month.

Incarceration doesn't work. It doesn't make the community safer.

Tsorbaris believes a summit might make a difference - all the states, territories, all the interested parties together in the room.

I cheekily ask if she thinks the monsters in the Northern Territory and Queensland could be brought into a more central position (just FYI, both Queensland and the NT have gone with the whole tough on crime rubbish since conservative governments were elected. Not helping at all).

Tsorbaris is way way way too diplomatic to criticise anyone but she genuinely believes getting everyone in a room could make genuine change.

"I think there could be a preparedness to shift policy."

What's needed is Help Way Earlier, which is precisely what vulnerable children and their families told the AHRC researchers.

There are, of course, actions which really do work and Tsorbaris shares what she and her team know including real-life examples? My favourite? A program called the Two River Pathway to Change in Walgett NSW, which led to a reduction of more than 30 per cent in Aboriginal kids appearing in the local Children's Court. Why? Recognising that kids need early support and intervention and help. And so do their families.

As Tsorbaris says: "If children think their families are starving, they will steal food."

We could fix that straight away with less pain that imprisoning kids for days, months and years on end.

Jenna Price is a guest Echidna and a regular columnist.

HAVE YOUR SAY: Would getting states and territories in the same room make a difference? Do you think politicians can contribute honestly to this kind of discussion? Do you think 'tough on crime' works? Email us: echidna@theechidna.com.au

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