Youth Crime and Diversion
'Break bail, face jail’
The Liberal Party has announced a “one strike” policy which would create a presumption against bail for young people who are taken into custody on a serious offence charge, where they are already on bail for a serious offence.
Investment in rehabilitation, early intervention and prevention programs
The policy also includes an investment of $40 million to establish a ‘Breaking the Cycle’ Fund to focus on early intervention and rehabilitation programs for high-risk youths and recidivist offenders.
Read the Liberal Party's "Break Bail, Face Jail" policy.
The Law Society’s response:
Without having seen any detail on the proposal, the Law Society has concerns about any proposal to reduce the courts’ discretion, especially in matters that involve at-risk children who, due to trauma, unsafe family environments, and association with negative peer groups, find themselves committing offences for a limited period of their life.
If a small cohort of young people are consistently breaching bail, much more needs to be done to address the reasons they do so. Many children who are on strict bail conditions are given little support to comply with them. A number of young people struggle to understand their conditions, due to linguistic or cultural barriers, or the complexity of the conditions. Critically, many youths breach bail for reasons such as homelessness and to avoid parental violence.
Reversing the onus of bail will make it even more difficult for such youths to avoid detention. Experience and empirical evidence indicate that if these young people spend time in custody, they are far more likely to end up entrenched in the criminal justice system rather than transitioning through the system as they mature and develop into productive adults. This is not conductive to community safety.
The Society supports the announcement of a fund to invest in early intervention and rehabilitation programs to reduce reoffending and improve community safety. These programs need to enable the early identification children at risk of criminal of anti-social behaviour, address the root causes of this behaviour and offer support to children to navigate their way out of the justice system.
The Society suggests that this level of funding is a starting point for more intensive and therapeutic support services, and notes that it is significantly more than the $3 million over four years pledged by the Labor Government to continue a program to divert Aboriginal children aged 10-14 charged with minor offences away from custody.