Moves to further restrict children's access to youth diversion programs in the Northern Territory will drive more children into an excessively punitive legal system and make future offending more likely, not less.
The Justice Reform Initiative today urged the Northern Territory Government to rethink its announcement on making more offences ineligible for youth diversion, saying a default approach that sought to bring children into the criminal justice and made imprisonment more likely would not lead to improved community safety.
Justice Reform Initiative Executive Director Dr Mindy Sotiri said it was deeply concerning to see the government continuing to put politics above evidence-based policy.
"Expanding the use of imprisonment and reducing the use of diversion will not build a safer community," Dr Sotiri said. "It's time to stop playing politics with this issue, and start implementing policy based on the evidence about what actually works to reduce crime.
"Community safety should be a priority for policymakers, but it is incredibly short-sighted to continue to suggest locking up more children is going to achieve this. Funding more police, building more prisons and locking more people up does not address the drivers of crime and it does not work to keep the community safe.
"The Northern Territory already has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. If imprisonment actually worked to reduce crime, then the Northern Territory would be one of the safest places in Australia. We have decades of research that demonstrates that contact with police and prisons makes it more likely that children will go on to reoffend. Putting children in detention doesn't break the cycle of crime, it reinforces it.
"The NT Government has now been in power for close to a year. At some point, there is a need to stop playing politics, and stop blaming the previous government for unacceptable rates of crime. We need to start talking instead about what policies and programs actually work.
"What the research shows us works is building programs and supports outside of prisons that are designed to address the drivers of crime. The evidence shows that if we support community led solutions and build the capacity of families and communities so that they are able to respond to things like drug and alcohol dependency, disability, mental health conditions, unemployment, family and domestic violence, and homelessness, crime rates will fall. This approach doesn't mean excusing crime or minimising its impact — it's about being smart about resourcing what actually works to build community safety."
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.
