More jail won’t stop youth crime
WHEN Trent Adams was a youth growing up in Charleville, his uncles took him into the bush to teach him about his culture.
The knowledge grounded Mr Adams as he watched his peers fall into a familiar routine of substance abuse, crime and anti-social behaviour.
“Once they grew up and engaged with country and culture they started to mature,” he said.
Today Mr Adams works to give wayward Indigenous teens a similar grounding in family and culture through Goolburri Aboriginal Health Advancement’s young justice program.
He helps juveniles and their families, peers and role models address the cause of their offending.
The program tackles youth offending in a way that starkly contrasts to what LNP leader Deb Frecklington announced yesterday.
If elected, the LNP vowed to remove the principle of detention as a last resort, monitor youth offenders on bail 24 hours a day, introduce mandatory detention for third convictions, establish a community payback farm program, scrap youth bail houses, and increase early intervention with a justice reinvestment trial.
While Mr Adams welcomed changes to bail monitoring and more early intervention programs, he said mandatory sentencing was a red flag.
He is concerned detention re-enforced anti-social behaviour and substance abuse, while further removing Indigenous teenagers from the family and culture.
“You are putting vulnerable people in vulnerable situations where they are exposed to people who will be a detriment to their future,” he said.
The proposal also reduced judges’ and magistrates’ authority.
“If someone has stolen food three times is that going to be considered the same way as someone who has stolen three cars?” Mr Adams said.
Mr Adams was also concerned about work farms, which he considered outdated and shortsighted.
“It brings back the stolen wages concept,” he said.
“If they have fines to pay back that is all good, but there needs to proper remuneration.”
He cited past examples where offenders were paid a prison wage for work done in the community.
“It is good for pocket money in detention, but do we want young offenders to look forward to a weekly pay cheque, or beyond that to a career?”
michael.nolan@thechronicle.com.au