“If we give up on the kids, then we’re in a world of trouble.”
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Those were the words of Greater Shepparton Police Superintendent Brett Kahan to media following a first-of-its-kind forum held this week as some concerning trends in youth violence emerge in the region.
About 35 leaders from Goulburn Valley schools, community organisations and agencies, sporting and cultural groups, industry representatives and police came together to brainstorm a collaborative approach to steer kids away from the criminal justice system on Tuesday, July 21 at Shepparton’s Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership.
There were no councillors or politicians present or involved.
Superintendent Kahan said the group would move forward exploring some “state-leading initiatives” to bring “meaningful solutions” to youth coming into custody for the first or second time following an overall trend toward violent behaviour in Shepparton over time.
He believes the public’s interest in and “hysteria” surrounding youth violence had been heightened due to the exposure of vision online.
Despite public perception however, Superintendent Kahan said there was “a very small proportion of violent crime committed by youth in Greater Shepparton”.
“Eight per cent of violent crime is youth-related, so not much,” he said.
“But... it’s really prevalent because they film through social media their crimes, and when that gets out into social media, people become concerned.”
Superintendent Kahan said kids who enter the criminal justice system usually fall into a cycle of re-entering the criminal justice system, so the collective goal of the leadership group is to divert them away from it.
“I'm really positive that we can make a big difference... we've got a really stable group of community leaders at the moment in Greater Shepparton,” he said.
Department of Education Goulburn area Executive Director for Education Sharon Hensgen-Smith explained how data from different agencies and sporting groups could be used to intervene early, such as school attendance data.
“Data like engagement with different sports camps, activities, those sorts of things,” she said.
“We talked really a lot about how we can divert our young people into more positive, proactive behaviours rather than being bored and finding other things to do that's not conducive to that positive behaviour.”
Both police and schools are seeing a rise in girls in the Year 7 to 9 age group “engaging in extremely violent behaviour, often unprovoked.”
“And that’s not just across our government schools, that’s evidenced across our non-government and independent sector as well,” Ms Hensgen-Smith said.
Police are seeing the same cohort, as well as other youths, running amok in retail spaces.
“It’s just that borderline criminality, but it’s to the annoyance of not only the retailers, but the community who want to shop,” Superintendent Kahan said.
“Part of their intimidation factor is the group, and that peer influence within the group, which escalates to their wanting to do something more, the next level above what they’ve just done.”
He said that if community members were choosing not to go to certain parts of Greater Shepparton because of concerns about youth violence or large groups of youths gathering, “we’ve got a situation that we need to rectify”.
“The community will be rightly sceptical because they may have seen the youth violence for far too long and go, ‘we’ve heard it all before’,” Superintendent Kahan said.
“Just judge us on results and we’ll see what we can achieve.”
Ms Hengsen-Smith said the group would be looking to help troubled youth with a restorative approach, and a therapeutic approach simultaneously if needed.
“Those resources exist within our community,” she said.
While a draft strategy, youth safety and violence prevention strategy and a whole-of-community strategy are being prepared with items for agencies who met this week to action when they meet again, police are urging the community to help.
“We need episodes of youth violence reported because the best way that we can work to assist all our endeavours to actually get towards our aim to have no youth violence in Greater Shepparton, we just have to have an absolute zero tolerance to it by the community and report it from a policing perspective,” Superintendent Kahan said.
He pointed to the success of Shepparton police’s ongoing violent retail crime Operation Securus, which has seen a significant drop in incidents, due largely to retailers regularly reporting crime to police.
“Now, we ask around youth crime and youth violence, even youth misbehaving in the CBD, of retailers, just don’t accept it anymore,” he said.
“The best way we can divert them away from that type of behaviour is knowing about it.
“This is not about sending kids who commit violence to jail; it’s far from it.
“It’s about steering kids who are on a bad pathway away from that path.
“I’ll never be sold on that a kid can’t be helped.
“The kid could just be having issues at home, it could be school, it could be their peers, but let’s work out what the problems are and try to help them get some better decision making.”
Superintendent Kahan said Triple Zero existed for anyone who was in fear and urged retailers or community members to call if they felt in danger.
“No-one deserves to walk around the community and feel scared,” he said.
“No-one deserves to go to work and feel scared.”