Just as the media warns that things might get desperate in the political race to govern Victoria, an announcement emerges that is obviously desperate and, more importantly, prepared to trash our fundamental legal system on the altar of political opportunism.
A concept where young children- and it includes very young children- are forcibly removed from society for 12 months of ‘conditioning’ in a detention centre, and that will fix our youth crime wave, really?
This crazy thought bubble of reintroducing a concept from 1902, the Borstal, on steroids, has quite a few fundamental flaws.
Significantly, our whole legal system is built on the premise that until a court convicts you, you are presumed innocent- until proven guilty.
The key question is: Who makes the detention decisions? If the answer is a judicial officer after a child is charged and the case is proven beyond reasonable doubt, that’s one category, but if it becomes a departmental decision based on risk factors, that’s very different and could create constitutional problems.
Are politicians looking to trash the concept of innocence until guilt is proven? It may not be implemented at the end of the day because of constitutional issues, but so what?
That will not be until after the election, and the popular announcement of reintroducing the Borstal, lockup of the little blighters will have done its electoral job.
Of perhaps more importance is that the people who are going to administer these arbitrary sentences have failed miserably to date in turning recidivists around, so what’s different with this idea?
A theoretical concept with no evidence to support the thought bubble is not the way to resolve the youth problem.
And it gets worse: the idea is floated that the Malmsbury Youth Detention Complex will house the scheme.
Just how do the architects propose to deal with bragging rights, as it will end up as a badge of honour for the child to enter the criminal world with more “street cred”, than they would otherwise have. “I did my time at Malmsbury”.
More significantly, if you get 12 months’ detention for a very minor crime, the deterrent effect of detention is lost for more serious matters.
Currently, in the youth space, 12 months is a long sentence, usually only achieved with a history of serious criminal activity.
If this process is to be done through the Court process and given the lack of enthusiasm of the judiciary to impose custodial sentences on children, it is not clear that, if this program is implemented, the Courts will not effectively block its function.
Another serious consequence if this program is implemented and jumps the initial hurdles that it will face is the extreme disruption it will cause to policing and the Courts. Courts are already overloaded and dispensing justice with extraordinary delays, and police resources are in dire straits; adding this idea would dramatically worsen the current problems.
Adding an influx of offenders for minor crimes will distract both entities from their major function. This influx would further overload police with briefs for any juvenile prosecution, reducing the Force’s response capability substantially, and the Courts would be further bogged down, slowing the wheels of justice by spending court time on minor matters.
This raises the prospect that the only solution will be to make this concept an administrative process; then our legal system is trashed, and every effort to avoid this risk must be pursued.
A young child will quickly adapt to incarceration, becoming institutionalised, void of wider public interactions, and will become a victim of the system, which is an unintended outcome that will encourage them to return to the detention regime when thrown back into the community, where many will not cope well.
And how do they get back to the safety of incarceration?
Reoffending on a grander scale.
Moreover, they will become recruiting fodder for organised crime and outlaw motorcycle gangs.
A more worrying aspect is that criminal gangs will recruit younger and younger children.
If you haven’t noticed, the vast majority of children have developed physically at a far greater rate than their predecessors, and a very young child can be physically intimidating without the development of their social capacity, and that is a dangerous mix.
If you are in any doubt about this phenomenon, take a trip to the area around a school at home time, and you will be amazed at the size of children outpacing their intellectual capacity.
You don’t have to be Einstein to connect the dots, which our politicians have failed to do.
There is, however, a more palatable solution and one that is most likely to succeed rather than this crazy scheme, and that is early intervention.
This would alleviate court overload, and with police implementing a supported early intervention scheme (proactive policing), retired officers could handle some functions, like school-based programs, reducing the workload on operational members and improving their efficiency and effectiveness.
At some stage, every child attends school, so that is the logical place to target with early intervention.
Apart from being achievable at a fraction of the cost to this cash-strapped state, early intervention, if effectively planned and implemented, will substantially reduce the State’s crime rates by making it difficult for organised crime to replace those within their ranks who are incarcerated or become debilitated by drugs or other injury.
Remove the pool of feeder recruits and the gangs will diminish.
Although this process takes time, if the program is clever enough, it will also have a short-term positive impact, guiding children away from even minor crime that stops natural progression in the criminal sphere.
This approach has been tried and succeeded in the past, and the spurious arguments that things are different today just don’t wash, and certainly have no substance or empirical status.
Yes, a new approach is needed, but who has the will and skill to lead the move?