“We are facing an emergency.”
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It was with these words that Palawa woman Karly Warner, chair of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services and chief executive of NSW and ACT Aboriginal Legal Services, opened a recent emergency online meeting titled Reckoning on Youth Justice.
Ms Warner went on to elaborate: “Today is about coming together for our children and young people because we know children’s rights should be upheld, not taken away.
“Aboriginal children and young people need and deserve access to holistic support services that are led by them and their communities and which are culturally safe.
“The increased number of adults and children incarcerated is not the result of evidence-based policy.
“It is the result of a political agenda concerned about appearing tough on crime, more so than actually stopping it, and it is perpetuating trauma in all of our communities.
“It is a terrible national trend that is now completely undeniable.”
Meeting attendee Nerita Waight, a Yorta Yorta and Ngarrindjeri woman, chief executive of Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service and deputy chair of NATSILS, lamented the current situation.
“What we’re doing now is failing our young people,” she said.
“We’re failing them now and in 10 years and in 15 (years) if we keep going down this path.
“We’ve already seen a 300 per cent increase in the incarceration rate.”
But in the face of these figures, governments across the country are making laws that are in contradiction to accepted international norms and conventions to which Australia is a signatory.
These laws are not based on evidence, but knee-jerk ‘fixes’ that do little to actually change anything.
“Right now, across the country, governments are politically point-scoring in the name of community safety,” Ms Warner said.
“They are focusing on throwing more children in jail at the expense of policies that can actually prevent crime.”
There are numerous programs both internationally and in Australia that have dramatically reduced incarceration and future offending.
The Spanish juvenile system offers a wide variety of alternatives to incarceration, designed to provide an adequate response to the situation of each child.
Hawaii’s Office of Youth Services provides and supports “front end” prevention, diversion and intervention services.
These programs have seen incarceration and re-offending rates reduced by at least 75 per cent.
The Mounty Aboriginal Youth & Community services — based in Mt Druitt, 43km west of Sydney — is the home of Mounty Yarns, a youth-led project set up to keep young people out of prisons.
A number of their young people have then gone on to become strong youth justice advocates themselves.
In Victoria, the Balit Ngulu (Strong Voice) program run by VALS also focuses on providing diversion and culturally appropriate services.
The recent budget announcement by the Victorian Government of $1.6 billion to implement draconian and regressive bail laws and yet only allocate a paltry $1.9 million towards youth justice outreach services and programs that work to support young First Nations people and their communities highlights the sense of urgency that prompted the Reckoning on Youth Justice emergency meeting
In the lead-up to the tightening of Victorian bail laws, the VALS warned the Allan Government that this would come at significant cost to Aboriginal people, Nerita Waight explained.
But they went ahead and did it anyway.
As Ms Waight pointed out: “It shows where their priorities lie.”
But it’s not just in Victoria that this is happening.
State and territory governments have demonstrated they are not interested in preventing crime — in addressing the underlying reasons for the disproportionate contact with police, courts and prisons.
“They are interested in policies that actually make our communities less safe for everyone,” Ms Waight said.
There are laws in several states and territories that restrict and deny the right to bail, forcing more children to spend time in prison without even being found guilty of a crime or who may go on to be sentenced to something other than a term of imprisonment.
The Northern Territory Government has reintroduced the use of spit hoods on children despite the 2017 finding of the 2017 Royal Commission banning their use.
The NT Government has also lowered the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 10, even in the face of overwhelming medical and scientific advice.
South Australia is working to give police dealing with children similar powers to those they have for outlaw biker gangs.
These extreme laws and policies are having a disproportionate impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.
“They are further harming and traumatising our young people who already are at an increased risk due to systemic racism and bias in Australia’s police and justice systems,” Ms Waight said.
“If prisons were working, we wouldn’t be having these conversations.”
In response to this escalating crisis of mass incarceration of First Nations children — who are put behind bars at rates that are grossly disproportionate to non-Indigenous children — an urgent complaint has been made to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in the form of an Early Warning and Urgent Action Submission.
This 50-page complaint documents what Rachana Rajan, associate legal director (First Nations Justice) at the Human Rights Law Centre, describes as “a clear, serious, persistent and escalating pattern of racial discrimination and inhumane treatment”.
The complaint was made through a committee process that’s reserved for the most serious violations of international racial discrimination law — violations that require urgent action.
It urges the UN Committee to find Australia in violation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and calls for urgent action.
The complaint was also sent to a number of independent human rights experts who are also UN advisers.
Two of these experts have issued an interim statement condemning the state of youth justice across our country.
Just pause for a moment. We are talking about Australia — a ‘first world’ country
Australia committing the ‘most serious violations’ of international racial discrimination law.
This is a shocking indictment of the extent of the crisis in youth justice that is happening now in all states and territories.
And yet, we have the solutions. They were clearly explained at the emergency meeting.
“Governments should double down on partnering with communities who hold the solutions and honour their commitments under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap,” Ms Waight said.
“Our communities and our young people have the solutions — local, community-led and -designed programs incorporating First Nations’ ways of knowing, being and doing. We are strong and resilient, and we always have been.
“Our kids are not the problem.
“It is the system that is failing them.
“You can’t expect young people to heal themselves.
“They need to be connected to their family, their community and their culture.
“Those are all protective factors.
“We see the decline in wellbeing and emotional distress when they are locked up.
“Most of the time, the state was supposed to be their parents but failed them.
“When they come home the children can heal and thrive.
“That’s why we need to invest in preventative measures and put supports in place for young Aboriginal children as they continue to be disproportionately targeted day in, day out.”
All our governments need to be courageous, to show real leadership.
To focus on the long-term hard work of looking at the inherent systemic issues, racism and biases.
To support evidence-based approaches rather than more of the ‘failing’ same.
To work in real partnership with — and fund — First Nations organisations and communities who already hold the solutions.
In this way we can have safer communities for everyone.
To read the complaint to the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of all forms of Racism go to hrlc.org.au/app/uploads/2025/04/United-Nations-CERD-complaint_youth-justice-in-Australia.pdf
To read the International Convention of which Australia is a signatory, go to ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-convention-elimination-all-forms-racial
To find out more about VALS Balit Ngulu services, go to vals.org.au/balitngulu/
Reconciliation column