If we are accused of banging on about the role of Police and schools, we plead guilty as charged.

The reason is two irrefutable facts.

Firstly, all, and we mean every one of the juvenile miscreants who are terrorising our community, go through the education/schools system.

Non-attendance is the first indicator of those children who need special attention.

So it is without apology that we push for that being the place to start, ground zero of criminality, and the Police must play a critical role in this.

After much criticism of VicPol by us and others of the lack of a Police in Schools Program (PSIP), a quasi-Police Schools program was introduced. This role was added to the commitments of police, who were already overloaded. And it is the next best thing to useless in this fight. It is unfair to the members and has extremely low effectiveness in the crime fight.

The reason this pretend program won’t work is that by its nature, it is spasmodic, and children only respond to regular commitments and will only develop meaningful relationships with the Police member as a person if the relationship is stable. It is precisely the same as teaching children about mathematics learning by rote and consistency. It is also the same dynamic that builds effective families- consistency.

It should also be accepted that a contributing factor in the attrition rate of Police is the lack of proactive work being undertaken. The Police members see the impact of juvenile crime and the lack of diversion available to them to steer young people away from crime, leading to their frustration with the policing role’s effectiveness.

There can be no better example of frustration leading to the loss of a very competent Police officer than the Opposition leader, Brad Battin, who was heavily involved in Operation New Start, a police volunteer organisation partnered by teachers and Service Club Members who worked together to ensure young people got to and stayed at school.

VicPol allegedly cancelled the program on the basis that it was too labour-intensive. That the program worked very well was not a consideration. The program was scuttled. Brad had had enough and resigned from the Force.

Now mature adults who went through the original Police In Schools Program can still and often do quote the name of the Police member who helped guide them many years ago, which is an accurate measure of the effectiveness of that program.

Being at the school on the same day at the same time to deliver a structured curriculum is the key, and anything less is of seriously questionable effectiveness and rates in the category of spin, something to distract critics.

The Government, Police or even, to a lesser extent, the schools tend to overlook the inescapable reality that amid those students walking through the door for their first day of school are the future juvenile offenders who will end up wreaking havoc in our community.

The community is getting sick and tired of bureaucratic buck-passing and inaction as those responsible seemingly take no action to stem the tide.

We cannot point to one initiative the government has introduced that stems this problem.

On the contrary, the government has introduced initiatives that feed into the juvenile cohort and are irresponsible.

The raising of the age of criminal responsibility allows those children who start their life of crime at a young age to escape any sanction to modify their behaviour until they are sometimes three to four years older. By then, they are well entrenched in the criminal sphere – too late to berate or lecture because it won’t work.

Softening Bail and custodial sentences to the point of abolishing them also feeds into the rise of juvenile crime, as there are no consequences for their behaviour. Moreover, criminal enterprises, whether local or large ones, can entice young people to commit crimes on the basis that nothing will happen if they are caught.

The second irrefutable fact is the solutions are in front of them.

Having programs to ensure school attendance and building relationships between the children and the Police as the symbol of authority in the classroom and socially at Blue Light Disco’s will work.

The highly successful Police In Schools program, Operation New Start, a program that got kids to school, and Blue Light are three initiatives that need to be urgently reintroduced to arrest the rot, devastating the future of too many of our children.

It is sad that Blue Light, which started in Victoria, is thriving in every other state and territory, with many Blue Lights operating in other countries but very few operating in Victoria.

These programs fed off each other and were highly successful when they were introduced.

The Force continues to promote the notion that they are understaffed, and to a degree, this may be true. However, staffing is all about priorities and stopping crime before it happens must be rated as the primary use of resources.

Any run-of-the-mill manager can achieve more productivity with more or unlimited staff; whether they are effective is moot; it takes a leader to prioritise the way out of the imbroglio of juvenile crime.

Crowing about arrests, as is often the case, as the police executive bustle to promote their performance; sadly, catching crooks is a higher priority than stopping crime in the first place. Task Forces are prolific, but not one is dedicated to stopping crime before it happens. They are all reactive, responding to demands that have occurred.

The frontline Police know what must be done; only the Executive seem to have their heads in the sand, hoping the problem will go away instead of making the hard decisions to change the course of criminality and Force priorities.

VicPol may even slow the exodus of police from their careers if members realise that they can become involved in meaningful programs that make a difference. Simply taking the miscreants to court to be continually bailed and then at court hearing all the excuses as to why the perpetrator should not be locked up to protect the offender from themselves and the broader community is extremely frustrating for police who know that there are better ways.

Often, understated is the financial impact on all victims as they open their annual insurance bills to see substantial increases and no matter how those increases are subject to spin, the reality is that insurance companies do not lose money as they adjust their premiums to the claims. With out-of-control crime, those premiums are skyrocketing.

Crime prevention is just as, or even more critical than, arresting criminals; just ask the victims.