Pic courtesy Herald Sun

To say the CAA has deep concerns about this Bill and the adverse impact it will have on youth crime in this state is a gross understatement.

What is generally not well understood is that this Bill is ‘the foot in the door’ for further introducing the concept of ‘Restorative Justice’, a monumental change in how Justice is dispensed in this State.

Significant changes included in this Bill include the plethora of conferences and committees required to manage each offender instead of the concept of punishment and accountability, which has been whitewashed out of this Bill.

Effectively, a child can take a position where they will not comply with any processes available to the Courts or any other authorities under this Bill, and nothing can be done about it. No punishment can be applied, regardless of the child’s actions.

We suspect that the majority of the community and many politicians do not understand the consequences this Bill will generate, none of them good.

Why wasn’t the community advised of this change? We are unaware of where the Government of the day achieved a mandate for such a severe and monumental change to the principles of Justice.

It took five years to draft, underscoring the difficulty and, given the outcome, incompetence displayed in the principles that have evolved to form this Bill.

They all will continue to stoke crime, not diminish it.

A fable best describes this Bill;

‘A committee was formed to design a Horse ( the Bill to Reform Youth Justice), but they came up with a camel ( no ordinary Camel but a two-humped  Bactrian Camel with three legs).’

 With all the effort of five years, the Bill as presented does not address the issue the community now faces and is riddled with extreme socialist ideology and drafted by a committee that has no understanding of the people they are supposed to be protecting. It will feed the crime wave.

The Bill misses the mark by a long way.

Central to the flaw in this Bill is the assumption that children under thirteen (13) cannot form criminal intent.

This assumption isn’t based on any empirical data and flies in the face of the reality of the evolution of human development.

Over the last two decades, the development of young people has accelerated faster than any other preceding era.

The speed at which this has occurred is most evident in the last ten years when evolution achieved warp speed, driven by two significant factors: Nutrition and Technology.

The ‘canary in the coal mine’, generally ignored, has been the accelerated crime rate by Juveniles and the failure to recognise the changes that were occurring in front of us all.

Nutrition

The impact of a higher level of nutrition in recent times must be seen as positive as young people will probably grow up healthier than their predecessors, but with that nutrition comes increased physical development. It’s not an issue until you realise that young people, on average, are taller and better developed physically than their predecessors. A phenomenon that immature minds can and do exploit.

 Technology

There can be no argument that the development of technology has and continues to accelerate at warp speed and that the young people born in this era are the ones that maximise its use. They are more connected and have access to more data than previous generations ever dreamed of. This massive influx of good and bad information has developed young people’s mental acuity well beyond the perceived norm.

Still, they lack the ability and maturity to process and analyse this data effectively, leading them to emulate others without understanding the consequences or ignoring the consequences because there are none.

These phenomena point to the main flaw in the Bill and the poor consideration of youth development, both physically and mentally, in its drafting.

Today, a 10 – 12-year-old is the equivalent of a 13–15-year-old ten years ago.

The Bill is headed in the wrong direction and should instead be lowering the age of criminal responsibility, not lifting it.

Lowering the age to 8-10 years old will allow young people who are developing into and headed toward crime, the ability for effective early intervention, not waiting until they are older and more entrenched in crime.

Early intervention will reduce crime and improve the chances of young people developing without the stigma of exposure to Legal processes.

Why do we have to wait until a young person starts to climb the hierarchy of crime before any action is taken?

The Bill is not about Youth and crime. Its only function is to divert young people away from the judicial system with no attempt to distract them from crime before they get involved or turn them away from committing further crimes.

Of great concern to the CAA is that the Bill leans heavily on the ideologically experimental concept of Restorative Justice that, even relying on questionable research, raises significant concerns about its efficacy.

Not only does the concept have a questionable ability to influence crime reduction, but it is also extremely cumbersome. It would be costly to initiate its recommended functions in this Bill, requiring a department to administer this part alone for questionable outcome benefits. The failure of Restorative Justice benefits vested interests, not the community.

The things that Bill aims to,

• Promote the broader use of the failed socialist dream of Restorative Justice, a concept of unrealistic goals that lack credibility, and research to support its efficacy. This Social experiment has already failed to live up to its hype. A concept requiring vast administrative support (and funding) for little or any identifiable valuable outcomes for the community.
• Allow a child to ignore the ten processes created by this Bill without consequences, ensuring the ineffective and wasted time and resources. All talk, no action.
• The CAA notes that the Bill requires the child’s consent for almost all interventions, which empowers the child to avoid any undesirable consequences of their actions.
• It will necessitate a considerable increase in the public service to cope with the massive increase in data management and processes this Bill creates.
• There will be an unrealistic load put on an already stretched Police Force to achieve compliance. (Taking police off the road to be administrators rather than being on patrol to reduce crime.)
• It will increase the severity and frequency of crime not only in the youth area but overall, as younger children coached by older criminals are encouraged to commit crimes as there are no consequences. (No offences for coaching children into crime in the Bill -most of those who coach will be children themselves)

The unintended consequences of the Bill are substantial and mirror the unintended consequences (fatal) of the Public Order Bill that removed the power of Police to intervene in public drunkenness.

The Bill fails;

• To hold children to age-appropriate accountabilities and consequences. It erases accountability and accountability as the basis of a deterrent.
• The bill intimidates the judiciary from imposing custodial consequences when a child continues ignoring the lectures and threats made by judicial officers or breaches Bail.
• By not referring to Prevention as a legitimate function and requirement to avoid children entering the Justice system, this document only has effect when the child has offended It’s then too late.
• No Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for any participants delivering the Bill.
• No provision for research.
• There is no clear direction as to who is responsible for the Bill’s application and coordination of service providers. The proposed Commissioner couldn’t cope with this function without a huge staff.
• What do the Service Providers do, and how are they assessed?

More specifically, our concerns relate to;

• Addressing the Drug issue with children in either use or participation in the trade. The recidivist juvenile is the addict of tomorrow.
• Lack of accountability of Parents – sanctions for parental failure.

We have identified the basis of this Bill, and it has, as we suggest, little to do with Youth or, more specifically, their criminal activity and how that might be prevented in the first place.

The concept of prevention before they commit a crime has been overlooked entirely, as the intent, in our view, is to write much of the Restorative Justice Philosophy that can be achieved, into legislation.

Giving this untested experimental concept the credibility of forming the basis of this Bill and using this Bill to provide status to this concept by using our children as pawns is unconscionable.

The Government is now looking to fast-track this Bill under the guise of addressing the current crime Tsunami.

New South Wales addressed the Recidivist Youth issue with a few minor changes to the wording relating to Youth Bail provisions.

Assessing their strategy, they are dealing with the issue from the juvenile perspective, not some ideological dream.

The youths are being remanded in custody, and that is punishment in the child’s mind and will act as a bigger deterrent than all the conferences that can be dreamt up.

This Bill needs to be stopped until proper analysis, and strategy can be developed – one that will work.