THE FALLIBILITY OF MISGUIDED IDEOLOGY

by CAA | Nov 19, 2023 | Library, Youth

Youth crime is the victim of ideology that is so blinkered as to fail to achieve its original goal.

In the late 1990’s to 2012 a formidable politician, Robert Hulls, championed a concept called Restorative Justice.

A concept, ironically given its devout following in Victoria’s Judicial fraternity, that has not exactly achieved worldwide acclaim or even acclaim to any great degree Nationally.

For all its warm-fuzzy ideological appeal, the concept remains just a theory, and we are paying the penalty of having our Justice system hijacked by a theory that, in practice, has failed, hence the lack of acclaim.

Look no further than the juvenile crime statistics over the last two decades to see the abject failure. This era was preceded by a Victoria Police Policy of proactive policing targeting young people and building bridges. A policy that worked.

The definition of Restorative Justice published by RMIT, is clearly an ideological joke gone disastrously wrong, and sane people should never have allowed it to permeate the justice system as it currently has.

Restorative justice is a theory of justice that focuses on the harm caused by crime and wrongdoing to people, relationships and communities.

It provides a framework for addressing and preventing harm that moves beyond punishment towards healing. As a practice, restorative justice processes most commonly bring together people affected by harm in a safe, structured and facilitated way, to talk about what happened, how they were impacted and how the harm can be repaired or addressed. 

https://cij.org.au/opencircle/what-is-restorative-justice

It is a fat lot of good having victims, sometimes of horrendous crimes, being confronted in a congenial environment with the perpetrator for ‘a healing’; ‘a healing for who’?

Healing the perpetrator does nothing for the poor Victim who not only has to suffer the consequences of the crime but is then called up for ‘a healing’, not for them, but for the perpetrator.

That this process would somehow reduce the likelihood of the perpetrator reoffending is an academic fantasy.

One major failing is this theoretical concept has been interpreted by the judiciary and others as a process to assist perpetrators and perhaps turn their lives around. The operative word is, perhaps, because, to those who know and understand the psyche of the young, it is highly unlikely to achieve the desired outcome.

Juvenile offenders know only one concept, and that is their personal advantage as they see it, and the impact on anybody else is immaterial.

When juveniles from a particular cohort are charged and convicted by a court, the perpetrator perceives only two options. If they walk from the court, they have beaten the charge, or they can be sent to prison, a badge of honour to be bragged about.

Lawyers and the Judiciary might as well save the energy from dissertations directed at a convicted juvenile perpetrator as they explain how wrong the actions are and that a diversion will be their ‘last chance’. Rhetoric without consequences, they have no doubt heard many times, making the threat useless.

So, no matter what might be said or recorded or otherwise by the Court, if the perpetrator walks from Court, their bragging rights herald, ‘I won’, and will be broadcast loudly amongst their peers. That has a knock-on effect of impunity from any consequences, emboldening others to commit crimes.

The Court’s focus on the individual perpetrator is important, but the Court has an obligation to the broader community, particularly other young people likely to offend.

That leaves us with a system that rewards, not punishes criminality, in the perpetrator’s mind’. Any deterrent effect is disastrously lost on any peers of the perpetrator as they can demonstrate that no matter what they do, nothing happens.

If reparation was enforced on the juveniles and or their family, it would at least be a tangible deterrent.

The best option to reduce juvenile crime is to prevent it by reintroducing proactive programs like,

• Blue Light Discos (Blue Light survives, but the discos have all but disappeared).
• The Police in Schools Program, which ran very successfully in Victoria from 1969 until 2006. (The current iteration is similar in name only; the very effective Curriculum-based version is no longer used.)
• Operation New Start was a program actively ensuring young people actually get to school.
• Derby Hill – a Blue Light resource used as a school camp. Local Police could spend time with their local children in a school camp orientated to Policing. The camp has been disposed of.

Early structured connection of police with juveniles pays high dividends in reducing offending. All of these programs had one remarkable similarity. When each was introduced, there was an immediate reduction in local juvenile crime.

Another option to reduce the frequency and severity of juvenile crime is incarceration, particularly for repeat offenders—understandable consequences for society and the juvenile.

Unfortunately, there is only one option to reduce the frequency and severity of juvenile crime, and that is incarceration—understandable consequences, not for society but for the juvenile.

Jail is not the place for young people; neither is it appropriate or in their best interest for them to rape,  rob and pillage society.

Shorter sentences will be the answer because time for young people moves extremely slowly, so a month or two with a generous good behaviour incentive would be more effective than any extended period to avoid the risk of institutionalisation and create a break in the nexus the juvenile has with their current peers.

Jail per se is not the problem; it is how this resource is used. Threats alone will never succeed, and the resource needs to be used more creatively and effectively.

After a relatively short period, the perpetrator’s peers will move on without the juvenile, a good outcome that gives the juvenile the chance to start again.

While jail should not be a holiday home, the discipline and proper management of juveniles will help them.

If the problem is perceived to be the jail, then fix the jail.

It’s their liberty that has to be sacrificed. A month without access to a mobile phone would be a great start on the road to a crime-free life.

In serious cases, it is the juvenile offender’s liberty that must be sacrificed to protect the Juvenile and the Victims.

The reduction starts with creative and effective pro-active programs to reduce crime in the first place and then pragmatic and effective management of perpetrators to guide them from their current path.

This will ultimately save lives, predominantly of the perpetrators. Crime can be a fatal endeavour.

ARE WE BARKING MAD OR JUST PLAIN STUPID?

by CAA | Jul 16, 2023 | Library, Youth

17th July 2023

Youth offending has been brought up again, this time by Chief Commissioner Shane Patton, who calls for exemptions to the impact of lifting the age of criminal responsibility from ten to thirteen.

However, this move from the Chief to fix an unrealistic situation created by the legislators will only complicate managing youth crime, making it more difficult for the police and potentially opening up opportunities for career-ending litigation should any police member break the new rules, even inadvertently.

It will not reduce criminality by this cohort but increase it, putting children and the community at further risk.

The changes rely on perceptions, not facts, and what may seem appropriate to police involved in an incident may well be rejected subsequently by a court. Who incidentally was not there when the incident occurred.

The process will become so complicated that police accoutrements (equipment carried by Police) will need to include a ‘Youth Criminal manual’ for each member to refer to.

“Stop the car chase, while I check the procedure; they may be children.”

The CAA has a long history of advocating for intervention at an earlier age to deter children from committing crimes, the proactive approach. We now accept that because of other factors outside the control of the police, the situation has deteriorated dramatically, and the impact on police resources is so severe by recidivist offenders, particularly in the youth cohort, reactive responses must be the priority until the situation stabilises.

We support and encourage the Chief Commissioner to redirect all proactive and support resources to the front line of youth crime. That includes all special interest groups within VicPol, irrespective of how important the people in these groups feel their work is, as well as suspending all training to free up training staff as well as students.

As the situation continues to deteriorate, a repose similar to a war footing must be adopted.

An influx of hundreds of extra police, their vehicles and other resources will lift dramatically the ability of Police to increase patrols.

This, however, cannot be used as a catalyst for police to absolve the function of Proactive policing permanently and must include a sunset clause.

The operation must have a monthly review of progress and, in the first instance, be for a period of six months.

The blame, however, for that deterioration must be placed squarely at the feet of the Judiciary. But as is often the case, the solution in part relies on the Police.

To succeed, the courts have to do their part, albeit they caused it.

The failure to rein in criminality amongst the youth is also not the fault of the pundit’s favourite whipping horse, their parents. Parents are effectively excluded from the Judicial process even if they are present.

The judiciary must accept the responsibility for the rising crime rate as the reins are in their hands, nobody else’s.

The judiciary is the final arbiter regarding the consequences a juvenile may face. Those consequences must be a consequence in the eyes of the juvenile, not the judiciary.

One thing is blatantly apparent; the youth do not respond well to the current raft of penalty options issued by the courts. The flaw is that the youths do not understand they are being punished; instead, they have been merely inconvenienced by going to court.

As soon as their case is finalised and they walk out of the court, in their minds, they have won, irrespective of what the Court says. They have bragging rights among their peers that they beat the charges, deterrent lost.

Irrespective of what the courts may impose other than detention, they have won.

We are not advocating detention in every case but certainly for recidivists, and the penalty must be realistic.

Young people operate in a different time zone to mature adults hence their tendency to live in the moment, so a detention penalty of a few days the first time, escalating by a few weeks for reoffending, would be the deterrent that will work without creating the hardened criminal that social engineers claim will be the outcome. Operating on youth time is the key.

The habit of governments following ideological whims to remove criticism by pretending they are addressing a problem is fraught with danger, the problem will not go away if the rules are relaxed.

This is a similar approach to the drug epidemic.

It is, however, a disgrace and a terrible indictment imposed on the youth and the victims.

What about the victims of youth actions that will no longer be criminal, but which severely damage the property or rights of these victims?  Will the Government compensate victims?

Will victims have access to Victims’ support, given the actions of this group are no longer criminal? Why should innocent victims bear the loss and burden?

Will insurers still honour policies when the damage is not a crime?

For example, a group of eleven-year-olds is actively stealing from shops.  Is the shop owner within their rights to physically detain the youths and recover his or her property, with force if necessary?  Young offenders know what they are doing is wrong.  Irrefutable evidence of this is that they flee when challenged.  If they did not know what they were doing was wrong, why would they flee?

Rather than resolving and working pragmatically to address the problem, the government has created a monster that will have unintended and dramatic adverse consequences.

The judiciary that created this problem with the support industries of the social manipulators that have evolved around the court system must be tasked with resolving it.

Rather than working pragmatically to address the problem, the government has created a monster that will have unintended and dramatic consequences.

There is no better demonstration of the many breakdowns of the Legal system than the approach to bail. We regularly hear that perpetrators commit serious offences while on Bail; the idiocy is that these same perpetrators regularly have their original bail extended, but you never hear that the Bail has been forfeited.

The net effect is that Bail does not act as a deterrent, part of its function.

Victim’s rights must be protected.  To do otherwise is to condone crime.

If we do not push back against this idiocy and the failure of the courts to accept responsibility for the loss of young lives, ‘ARE WE BARKING MAD OR JUST PLAIN STUPID?’

CRIME IS OUT OF CONTROL -WHY?

by CAA | Jun 19, 2023 | Library, Youth

20th June 2023

The Community Advocacy Alliance CAA has been concerned for some time and repeatedly warned that failing to undertake effective preventative, proactive programs will lead to a worsening youth crime rate.

Our worst fears have been realised.

So concerned about Law enforcement’s direction, the CAA developed a Police Veterans in Schools Program with many Police coming out of retirement as volunteers to deliver the program. But this was thwarted by the then Chief Commissioner Ashton and the impact of COVID.

The current Chief Commissioner who supported a school’s program has been unable to implement it, and we wonder whether there was pushback from the Education Department or Union against the proposal. Or perhaps internal pressure by those Police with a limited mindset only capable of understanding the reactive approach as the role of Policing.

Irrespective, the State still does not have a structured, measurable program that can intervene and reduce crime before it occurs; proactive Policing.

Unfortunately, over two decades ago, the then Police Command withdrew the Force from active involvement in working face-to-face with youth and the community in crime prevention programs. This decision was not based on any empirical data but the opposite and was implemented by an executive that obviously did not understand Policing and functioned on a whim.

Although there is some activity in this space today, it is minuscule, the efficacy is flaky at best, and what does happen now is not structured or measurable.

The programs scrapped or so severely impacted as to make them impotent, were ‘Blue Light Discos’, ‘Police in Schools Involvement Program’, ‘Safety House’, ‘High Ropes’, and ‘Operation Newstart’, all of which were force-wide. While numerous other programs initiated by local Police, such as ‘Backyard Rugby’, ‘Poll Position’, ‘Walk It Like You Talk It’, and many more, actively engaged with youth.

These programs were predominantly driven by the frontline Police acknowledging the problem and providing a solution, a bottom-up approach with the front line Police having ownership of the initiative and, therefore, voluntary commitment.

The Police recognised the importance of schools in these programs and generally involved them and their community, creating a whole of community approach, to the benefit of the children.

What is forgotten is that the growth of youth gangs can only occur where there is a pool of willing youths eager to join. Engaging with the younger youth before they are misdirected, is the only sure way to mitigate the gang culture – cut the supply line.

Ironically many of these programs initiated and developed in Victoria and then scrapped continue very successfully in other States and overseas, where the value of these programs is universally accepted as an essential part of effective Policing.

Victoria Police have been forced to adopt a more reactive, risk-averse policing model.

The current Chief Commissioner, Patton, is attempting to return to a community policing model, but unfortunately, it is like trying to turn the Titanic. And like the Titanic, these attempts have failed, and the inevitable outcome is where we are today.

In well over a decade, there has been a huge turnover in police numbers, and consequently, many newer police officers know nothing but a reactive policing model, with proactive policing an anathema to most.

We are paying a heavy price with substantial Police resources heavily committed reactively to the youth issue. This is at the cost of servicing the myriad of other societal problems that befall a community. The most obvious is Domestic Violence and the Road Toll.

The result is already being felt, with a marked decline in effective crime prevention, impacting all facets of our lives. Increased incidents of Domestic Violence and a soaring Road Toll.

Fear of crime can be the worst form of oppression for any community.

Having identified failings within Policing, the real elephant in the room seems to avoid scrutiny.

Hiding in full sight is the Judiciary.

While the focus, to a degree, is unfairly levelled at the Police, it is unfair for the Police to shoulder all the blame when it is the Courts that bear the ultimate and the lion’s share of responsibility for the situation we now face.

Police arrest and charge perpetrators, but it is the Courts that determine the penalty upon conviction and must take responsibility for the outcomes of each sentence imposed.

The responsibility for charging perpetrators lies with the police, while the courts determine whether they become recidivists.

However, the legal system in Victoria seems to be a combination of different approaches that claim to be innovative but lack any accountability. The introduction of Restorative Justice in the past decade has caused significant harm to the legal system. This process has reduced the accountability of perpetrators for their crimes and, in some cases, has shifted the blame to the victim. For instance, in cases where the victim left a window open, the perpetrator climbing in and stealing property was seen as less serious, thereby reducing the criminal’s culpability. This is absurd.

In all of the nonsensical initiatives or interpretations that followed the lauded Restorative Justice initiative, the Courts lost perspective of what they were there for and any semblance that the Courts bore any responsibility for the crime rate, is successfully disguised.

Our Court system has so deteriorated that perpetrators can be bailed multiple times, have multiple court appearances, and the Courts simply find excuses to allow the perpetrators to return to the community to offend again.

The oft-hackneyed phrase, ‘incarcerating perpetrators only makes them worse’ -is arrant nonsense because the rhetorical question that must follow is, ‘worse than what?’.

Perpetrators who are recidivists are ‘worse’ back on the streets, particularly young ones who need to be protected from themselves as much as the community needs to be protected from them.

Any notion that the Courts have an obligation to the Victim or society more generally has evaporated. The Courts have been totally encapsulated in the notion that the offender needs all the considerations, and somehow being nice to them will solve the problem.

We suggest that the problem is, that most juvenile offenders who are at the lower end of the IQ Scale see anything other than incarceration as beating the offence.

In reality, most offenders scoff at the lenient sentencing as nothing more than an inconvenience, as the Governments own statistics reveal.

Reoffending by children and young people in Victoria found that in Victoria, young people aged 10 to 14 years have the highest reoffending rates of all ages in the criminal justice system, with more than 80 per cent reoffending at some time, and more than 60 per cent reoffending with an offence against the person (Aggravated Burglaries).

https://www.justice.vic.gov.au/youth-justice-strategic-plan-2020-2030-delivering-age-appropriate-responses-for-10-to-14-year-olds#

The Judiciary has clearly failed in its duty. Generally, it passes off the responsibility for this shocking State of affairs to the ‘Juvenile Justice system or Police, but it is the Judicial officers who are the ones who determine the outcomes, not some bureaucrat working in the Department or a police member trying to attend more calls than the available time their shift allows.

All the browbeating is worth naught until the Judiciary starts regularly incarcerating offenders rather than issuing continued warnings, introducing consequences, a novel approach to reducing crime.

It’s important to understand that detaining juvenile offenders for a brief period can actually be beneficial in breaking their behavioural patterns. This point is often overlooked by those who are against incarcerating minors.

A child lives in the moment, and time relative to them differs greatly from that of an adult.

Many within the Judiciary avoid the hard decisions, and until we insist on accountability and the compilation of useful statistics where the performance of a Judicial Officer can be measured, nothing is likely to change.

What value is a Judicial officer’s service to society when their decisions translate into a very high recidivism rate amongst perpetrators who are convicted in their Court?

We need to shift the focus of the Courts to their proper role of reducing crime.

Without the Courts doing their job, the Police cannot do theirs, and we all suffer as Police are committed to the recidivist gangs rather than other important issues.

And the future? Courts will continue to allow perpetrators to avoid responsibility for their crimes, and Police will be faced with ever-increasing demands for increased police numbers to deal with exponential demand for the reactive function, at a huge cost to the State that you and I pay for.

We desperately need a brave Government intervention and a circuit breaker to the spiralling downward trend of Law and order in Victoria.

Without intervention in the Courts current philosophical disposition, criminals will ultimately face far less punitive outcomes for their activity and coupled with the moves to decriminalise the Drug issue and raise the age of criminal responsibility, you can see where it is headed – and it is not good.

TEN TO FOURTEENS- COMMIT MURDER BUT NOT IN VICTORIA – REALLY?

by CAA | Mar 20, 2023 | Library, Youth

20th March 2023

Do you remember the shocking case of two-year-old James Bulger?

1993    James was abducted, tortured and murdered by two young boys. The murder happened  in the UK, and Robert Thompson and Jon Venables were convicted for this atrocious  crime. They were both ten years old when the offence occurred. The high-profile 1993 British case horrified the world, everybody was rightly stunned as to how that could happen, but it did.

James Bulger being abducted by Thompson and Venables.

2017    An eleven-year-old boy was charged with Murdering Patrick Slater in a brawl in Perth.

2020   Solomone Taufeulungaki, a Melbourne Teenager, was murdered by a gang of  eleven, including two thirteen-year-olds. They have all been charged with  Solomone’s murder.

Melbourne Teenager Solomone Taufeulungaki was murdered by children

2021.  Five young people charged with Murder in Sydney, boys aged 13,14,15,13 and a girl aged 15, were apparently the perpetrators, all charged with the murder of  a sixteen-year-old boy.

2023  Media report that a 13-year-old was charged with the murder of his 4-year-old   sibling in Danville, Virginia, US. The 13-year-old was charged with murder after suffocating their sibling and confessing to the crime.

2023 The report (H/S 16/03/23 p.22) of the murder of a twelve-year-old girl by  classmates aged twelve and thirteen who confessed the crime. The victim was stabbed thirty times and dumped in a wooded area.

In this incident, offenders were aged twelve and thirteen and was particularly gruesome and horrific; highlighting the folly of increasing the age of criminal culpability to fourteen.

This murder occurred in Germany, where the age of criminal responsibility has been lifted to fourteen, and neither perpetrator can be charged, raising some very interesting issues for Victoria, currently considering the same regressive move.

• Will the victim’s family face being confronted by the perpetrators in their community?
• How will the family cope knowing the murderers were not punished or even tried?
• What happens if the perpetrators claim innocence? Their matter is never tried so they will be forever tarred with the title murderer? The legal maxim, innocent until proven guilty, may not reconcile with the Court of Public opinion.
• What happens to the perpetrators? The sheer brutality requires the community to be protected.
• Clearly, the police would have no power to intervene in any continuing offending, so who does?

We accept that these offences are not an everyday occurrence. Still, they are so brutal when they happen that the community cannot and will not tolerate this decriminalisation as part of being an enlightened society – particularly for the families of those who, as a result, have their loved ones’ lights put out, brutally and permanently.

These random examples are just a few of what happens, and it happens here, so we would be extremely foolish to take the ‘won’t happen here’ path.

It has and will continue to happen; the uncomfortable truth for the social dreamers is that as much as we might wish it, it is inevitable.

This current push in Victoria has the hallmarks of another Social construct that is not well thought out and devoid of an understanding of the consequences and reality.

The number of children aged 10-14 charged in 2007 was just over 10% (of all young people charged), but by 2016, the trend had the figure at 4.3%, according to the Crime Statistics Agency Vic.

Our current strategies are working, although they could be improved upon; why dabble, build on a solid foundation if you want enhanced results.

As the law currently stands in Victoria, a child over ten and under fourteen cannot be charged with a criminal offence unless they knew the alleged act was wrong when they did it. The safeguard of having an independent person/ parent present when the child is interviewed, to our knowledge, has never been challenged.

This proposal is like throwing the baby out with the bath water, inane.

There is no doubt that youth crime has grown overall, but then so has the community, and the Police Cautioning program, its years of success, with its low recidivism rate remaining the cornerstone of this multi-discipline approach in guiding young people away from crime. Still, it is not designed to deal with serious crimes committed by the very young, which has to remain the purview of the Courts.

See https://files.crimestatistics.vic.gov.au/

The following questions we pose for the Government.

• What mechanisms will be in place to protect the community?
• What mechanisms will be designed to help victims?
• What do police do with the child?
• What protections exist to allay litigation for the victim or the perpetrator?
• What strategies prevent criminals from exploiting and using children to commit crimes, particularly in the drug scene?

Germany has made a grave mistake with their approach, lifting the age to fourteen; there is no empirical data even to hint that the current system in Victoria of the age of responsibility is an issue.

A home invasion where victims are woken to find perpetrators in their houses is extremely frightening. However, this scare is not mitigated because the perpetrators are subsequently determined to be children. The victims will be just as terrified in some circumstances fearing for their life, irrespective of the age of the offenders.  A list of Home invasions allegedly committed by children under fourteen would be too long to detail here.

The danger increases for the victim if the perpetrators are young, as they do not understand all the consequences of their actions. That is an irrefutable fact.

We have no issue with, and support developing strategies to reduce the incidence of juvenile offending and support any efforts in this area, and equally support the current multi-discipline approach to reduce the likelihood of young people reoffending.

However, we strongly reject the current proposal, which effectively removes the ability of police to give a formal caution where the child, the parents, and professionals can be brought together to assist the child’s direction and also completely ignores the rights of victims and the broader impact on the community. The risk of escalating child criminality is just too great.

We do strongly recommend that a formal and structured police-in-schools program be revisited as a preventative initiative with the added advantage that the assistance for the children can be coordinated with the schools bringing police and the professionals together to achieve better outcomes, focusing on prevention and follow-up of children cautioned, improving the outcomes for children. Such a program also educates children in the pitfalls of being involved in anti-social behaviour in all its forms and encourages their formal education.

Additionally, this program will support School staff confronted by children or parents and create an overall safer school environment for all, to improve educational outcomes overall.

So let’s hope sensible, pragmatic ideas prevail and raising the age of criminal responsibility is not pursued.

Premier – don’t do it.

The CAA would be happy to assist the Government in achieving a workable plan with reduced risks to all.