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There simply is no one size fits all solution to this long entrenched problem.
A start must be
made with the communities and family networks these kids come
from. The youth justice system will always allow kids to be bailed to families
providing
the crime isn't too severe, the kids history not too unstable and the family
environment
reasonably stable. The above is as true of indigenous kids, rural/remote kids as it is of any young people, anywhere in Australia under any political party ! I say this in response to comments below that are quick to blame party politics, accuse the system of racial based discrimination or simple incompetence. Yes, we need (and have, but in limited numbers) all the options listed in the last paragraph and need more, but what is really needed is for remote indigenous communities to have meaningful occupation for its members, be that paid work, educational options and a level of self-management.....only when families and kinship networks are more intact and better functioning and supported by the local community will incarceration rates drop........rates of offending correlate strongly with levels of family functioning in ANY community. Without occupation, reasonable financial independence and local trusted support networks nothing will change........it hasn't since the 1970's when I first worked in both the youth justice and indigenous support fields ! Australia needs to increase spending significantly on mentors, counsellors, any form of help for families at risk of abuse, domestic violence. When there is one report of domestic violence or child Abuse, there needs to be these support services available and willing to come and do what they can to change whatever is needed to provide support for dysfunctional adults. Whatever is done in the early days, whatever is spent is much less than mopping up, repeated gaol time for those who are unable to properly parent. Sometimes it may mean adoption for the child at risk. Children wander the streets in many communities because they are not safe at home. And commit small crimes that can escalate into something more serious. Which political party is willing to address problem families early on? Are the LNP or Labor willing? Their interest and willingness to spend money is only for those apparently better off, apparently more stable families. Both parties are letting many young Australians down. SuperBoy loudmouth 26 Dec 2018 16:56
Speaking of which,
the cashless welfare card is administered by Indue, owned by Liberal and
National Party members, that donates to the Liberal and National Parties. The
Former Chairman of Indue is former LNP MP, Larry Anthony who is the son of
former Liberal Country Party Deputy Prime Minister Doug Anthony. Punitive punishment serves no other purpose than to create a recidivist criminal class. Prison should be about community safety and rehabilitation, not revenge. No child should ever be imprisoned, denying liberty is one thing, brutalising them is another, it's sick really. Imagine it was your child in a prison...plus a lot of it is class and race based, at one stage 100% of youths in jails in the NT were aboriginal, 100%...may still be the case. We once thought capital punishment was acceptable, one day we will look back with the same disgust and wonder how anyone accepted the jailing of minors. loudmouth loudmouth 26 Dec 2018 16:38 And where is the Special Envoy for Indigenous Affairs whilst all of this is going on? Is he off somewhere in an air-conditioned conference centre, telling yet another bunch of flat Earth idiots that climate change doesn’t actually exist? May I suggest that there are no simple answers to this highly complex problem. I worked for some years with youth and men exiting the Justice system... some identified as Aboriginal. The one thing without exception that all shared was a background informed by deep personal trauma.... physical, mental, emotional, sexual abuse... on a grand scale. As a result many have serious ongoing mental health issues that need addressing and ongoing maybe lifelong support and acceptance. In addition, very few could read or write most were to put it bluntly, illiterate. So from multiple perspectives we have failed these young people and men. Many children are locked up on remand because their families are living in insecure housing or homelessness and there is nowhere else for the courts to send them. And how many of their parents are homeless because of the LNP’s police-state work-for-the-dole penalties? Kelly O’Dwyer is a disgrace and the sooner that she is driven from politics the better. loudmouth beeden 26 Dec 2018 16:31 "$1,400 to keep a child locked up each day,.." Sydney's most expensive boarding schools actually cost a fraction of that. A huge complex social problem-never in a million light years would an improved structure to reduce the horror of it be set in place by a Conservative Government-Always Poverty begets Poverty. When a child has to be imprisoned, they have already failed. It's sad that a kid of 10 or 12 has degenerated to the level they have to be locked up, but don't blame the authorities for protecting the rest of us. No justice to see here, no progress either. More than a disgrace, more like officially sanctioned criminal abuse, no charges against the thugs beating up on the kids at Don Dale, of course not. Racist police state must die, eventually. TommyGuardianReader 26 Dec 2018 15:22 When we put children in prison we condemn them to fail. It is our collective responsibility to keep them out. When we put children in jail we fail. Nationally we are currently failing in Alice Springs.
Internationally we
are also failing in Nauru, Manus Island and on the Mexican Border. This is a national shame. Surely we can do better than this! "$1,400 to keep a child locked up each day,.." If only this money was being spent each and every day in the communities from which these children come from. What an extraordinary amount of "costs" for incarceration charged by the "privatised system", shares anyone? You'd think that such a ferociously expensive system would be able to redirect the children's lives away from persistent imprisonment, instead it seems to indoctrinate the children to a lifetime of jail. Perhaps there should be a fine against the prison companies for every child prisoner returning to further incarceration, either again in youth detention or as an adult. Maybe then proper rehabilitation processes could be put in place. This staggering daily amount highlights how eagerly one system is placed in preference over another. Recent reports of "rip offs" highlight a little acknowledged example of the salt regularly rubbed into the wounds of Aboriginal communities, and their constant battle to collect project funding. Rather than invest in community systems the government, of either persuasion, invariably chooses the least community appropriate, and the cycles of incarceration continue. With the desperate need for country to be brought back to sustainable life, it would be far better that these youth and adult offenders became part of a strong Ranger program on country, making far better use of monies otherwise wasted unproductively in a failing prison system. Or is this just another means of moving people off country so that "new arrivals"/outsiders can appropriate and disrupt the "fabric" of other's country. With financial costs blowing out on imprisonment programs, the governments, State and Federal, now cry poor and cut other significant areas of community concern, while happily spending money on this wastefulness. Tragedy relentlessly repeats itself $1,400 per child per day after $1,400 per child per day, to no change. To no bloody change! This is the definition of insanity, and this is the cruelty inflicted each and every distorted money spending day of Indigenous community lives. It is unconscionable that amidst the cries and calls of Australian society's so-called "Christian values" this hideous damnation of young lives occurs at the great expense of Indigenous families and their communities. Needless waste or deliberate betrayal of Indigenous communities and the whole of Australian communities at large, this is money everyone knows could be so much better spent in so many more humanely, beneficial ways. AwakenstoEmptiness AdamCMelb 26 Dec 2018 14:34
At over $500,000
per person per year cost for incarceration you would think that some sort of
“supervised group housing” would be very worthwhile. Gary Fallon LastDuckinOz 26 Dec 2018 14:18 I am not saying there couldn't be better solutions than jail but at least consider the victims and their need for justice and protection for the communities affected. But do you really want justice, or are you seeking revenge? Justice would be best served if these young offenders did not reoffend and that would provide protection for the communities affected. This requires intervention at the very first offence that lands these young people on the criminal justice merry go round. That costs money which the community seems unprepared to pay, despite the very obvious future savings to tax payers such an approach would take. Easier to lock them up and keep locking them up at enormous cost to taxpayers. Revenge never seems to come cheap. Graeme Taylor LastDuckinOz 26 Dec 2018 14:14
Many are on remand,
rather than sentenced. That means they are suspected of committing an offense,
and may not have done anything wrong. It is pretty depressing to think that many young suspected offenders are placed on remand simply because there is nowhere else for them to go. Finding some sort of solution to that problem may be a practical way to help address the overall problem, at least to an extent. Perhaps these kids could be referred to some sort of supervised group housing while awaiting trial? Beyond that, it is hard to know what the solution is. According to the ABS, the most common offence committed by young offenders in the NT was breaking and entering with intent (37%). If you do that often enough, you are going to wind up in the clink, one way or the other. Clearly, the cops are not busting these kids just for minor drug offences or intoxication or something. The real question is how can we stop young people, especially young aboriginal people, from committing crimes in the first place? The problem of failure starts well before they go to prison! Casino capitalism sets people and young people in particular up for failure in a deliberate and systematic way
The neoconservative
neoliberal global system has failed our children especially by manipulating the
true purpose of education. We embrace Free market ideology, the abandonment, and alienation of working people in our country, “every man for himself” and then we want people to cooperate. As larger and larger segments of society are forced because of declining economies to become outsiders, the use of coercion, under our current model, will probably become more widespread. Neo-liberalism is one of the greatest threats to the future of progressive education, it is data-driven it works against the development of a student's ability to think critically, thereby undermining the formative culture and values necessary for a democratic society. If we keep looking at educational policy and practice through the lens of market-based values, there is little hope that a society, with its aim of educating students for critical citizenship and social and economic justice, will survive. As Michael Yates (The Great Inequality) points out throughout this book, capitalism is devoid of any sense of social responsibility and is driven by an unchecked desire to accumulate capital at all costs. As power becomes global and politics remains local, ruling elites no longer make political concessions to workers or any other group that they either exploit or consider disposable. LastDuckinOz 26 Dec 2018 13:11 Children don't get sentenced to "youth detention" aka jail for no reason. There are very real victims (often of the same cultural group) behind their offending. Sympathisers would do well to consider that the real victims here are not the people who are locked up when all other deterrents have failed, including community service and counselling, and there offending includes serious damage to people or property. I am not saying there couldn't be better solutions than jail but at least consider the victims and their need for justice and protection for the communities affected. Doggymind ildfluer 26 Dec 2018 13:06 I don't mean they should be taken from their families, its more like they have to go to boarding school to finish their education. But this would apply to any child or youth offenders, racial back ground is irrelevant. Graeme Taylor 26 Dec 2018 12:50
It's symptomatic of
a greater problem, where these kids are the scapegoat. Because the settler state
has displaced the true owners of these lands, or else put First nations' Peoples
in stalemate situations of hopelessness, the kids react to any authority of the
settler state. Locking them up is just the easiest solution. Providing proper social services to deal with these problems requires a lot more effort. In the long run it costs us a lot more to just lock away a potential part of our society but governments really only are concerned with the short term and what gets them elected/re-elected. Rather than prison for juvenile offenders, there should be a special boarding schools set up with mandatory completion of high school and university admission or a Tafe place on release a minimum requirement. |
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