AUSTRALIA
Inflexible rules in the youth justice system are setting children and young people up to fail and worsening the Indigenous incarceration rate, Western Australia’s commissioner for children, Colin Pettit, has said.
In a submission to the Australian Law Reform Commission inquiry into the over-representation of Indigenous people in custody, Pettit said strict conditions on bail, parole or community sentencing orders, coupled with a lack of support, led to Indigenous children being reincarcerated.
Indigenous children are 25 times more likely to be in detention and 17 times more likely to be on some form of youth justice order than non-Indigenous children, according to figures from 2015-16.
“It is very concerning that many young people are unnecessarily held on remand or returned to custody due their failure to comply with onerous or unreasonable bail conditions, which can ultimately perpetuate the cycle of involvement in the youth justice system,” Pettit said.
He said the issue had been raised by young people who were interviewed by the commission about their involvement with the justice system.
“When I was on curfew, I was one minute late,” one 17-year-old boy said. “I walked around the corner and the cops was sitting there ... I got locked up and went straight back to [Banksia Hill youth detention centre]. I was one minute late. I was coming home. It was one minute. I was one minute home. They didn’t give me time to get into my house.”
Another boy said people released on community-based orders should be given second and third chances if they breach the conditions imposed by the court, rather than being immediately jailed for the breach.
“It’s like if we just chucked them an order,” a 16-year-old boy said. “You know, bang. You’ve got an order. You’ve got to report every day … Before they gave me two orders I had to ring up three times a week and I had to go in there three times a week … It was too much, you know. Then they want you to do all these things, they expect you to do all on your own.”
Inflexible conditions on bail and other orders; the need for sentencing reports that provide more information about the individual offender and their circumstances; the targeting of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by police; the impact of mandatory sentencing; and alcohol law reform were all issues raised by the Australian Law Reform Commission discussion paper, released in July. Submissions closed earlier this month.
The commission consulted with 92 people who had contact with the youth justice system.
Pettit said the results of that consultation did not support changing bail laws to specifically require the court to take into account a person’s Aboriginality and concluded that race had a lesser impact on the likelihood of reoffending than socioeconomic factors.
He supported the abolition of mandatory sentencing, saying WA’s three-strikes laws, which allow people as young as 17 years old to be automatically jailed for 12 months upon their third conviction for aggravated burglary, had “a disproportionate impact on Aboriginal young people” and violated Australia’s human rights obligations.
A number of young people consulted as part of the submission said there should be more Indigenous-specific programs available both in and out of prison, delivered by Indigenous people. They said there was a particular need for programs for girls.
“I’d say if there were more Noongar people working [at Banksia Hill] then the kids would have more fun and speak more,” one 15-year-old girl said. “They have got a lot of stress and it’s hard for them looking at white people here every day so it’s better for them to have Indigenous people.”
Young people said they needed additional support either through mentoring programs or specific police officers, whose job is to help them stay out of detention.
“Get a mentor and get the mentor to have a talk with them and see what goes from there,” a 19-year-old man said. “I need that support from [my mentor] as much as I can, yeah. Yeah, they tell me some good things, they helped me out.”
He said his mentor helped him keep his attendance up at a driving program by helping him focus on the goal of getting his licence and that helped him pass his driving test.
Another said the youth crime intervention order at his local police station “is moorditj [good] ... he just cares”.
“When he was working in one of the police stations they wouldn’t give me bail but he talked to the boss and said, ‘Give him bail, I know he will stay within his curfew,’ and they were like, ‘No he won’t, no he won’t!’ and I did it,” he said.
One young woman said she wanted a life outside of cyclical re-entry to the justice system.
“I want a life for myself and I want a job when I get out of [Banksia Hill] cos I’m sick of it,” the 17-year-old said. “Like, this life we live is not sustainable, if you get what I mean. Like, we can’t keep going the way we go. You can’t keep on doing crime, cos this is the way we end up, in here … We’re all young still and got time. I have a lot of time.”
The commission’s final report is due on 22 December.
By Calla Wahlquist
25 September 2017
