Latest News & Updates

This weekend one of our lawyers, James, is launching himself and his home-built-flying-machine off of a four metre platform into the Yarra River.

We’d love for you to get behind James and Youthlaw and donate to back his superhuman efforts and support us!

On the day of the event (this Sunday at 11.30am) all donation amounts are given a metre value, which means that your donation will increase James’ flight distance. The longer the flight distance, the better chance to ‘win’ more money towards Youthlaw.

In the lead up to Moomba James has been hard at work wielding a hot-glue gun and dealing with burnt fingers. James is a great lawyer, but not as confident in his crafting capabilities. With your help we can rally his spirits for one last serious crafting session, and even increase his flight distance!

Today the Victorian gov’t announced moving youth justice including youth detention facilities under the control of Corrections Victoria. This is before their own review is complete and before others are handed down. This move if unchecked will quickly pave the way for dismantling a differentiated response to juvenile offending. It will only lead to more crime not less.

The youth justice facilities at Malmsbury and Parkville have struggled to deal with a cohort of young people engaged in high repeat offending moving through the system over the past 18 months. Their presence has highlighted deficiencies that have been observed by the youth justice sector for years, an overly punitive culture, inadequate physical structure and inadequate staffing.

These deficiencies were identified in numerous reports to Government over many years. The latest , the 2016 Muir report, warned that a lack of permanent, experienced and competent staff and increased lockdowns could trigger escalated behaviours. The report cautioned against introducing tough-on-crime responses and instead should retain a vital focus on the rehabilitation of young offenders. The report recommended a major physical upgrade.

Producing better youth justice outcomes requires a look at the facts. Our youth justice system has to date been held up as exemplary, with low detention rates, diversionary features to reduce re-offending and a dual track that allows young vulnerable adults to be kept in the youth justice system rather than serve their time in adult jail. As for youth crime, the number of individual youth offenders in Victoria is on the decline and has been steadily declining over the past 10 years, as it has in most industrialised countries.

Repeat Victorian Governments have been slow to make any significant improvements to the youth justice system.  Now is an opportunity to look at effective models of youth detention and think outside the law & order tool box.

We only need to look at the highly successful Spanish juvenile system over the past 20 years to see what works.  They are dealing with high youth crime & high unemployment and yet need to use few restraints, have few violent incidents inside, no escapes and don’t use batons or handcuffs. Instead they have a high ratio of staff comprising mostly educators & psychologists and a lower number of security guards.  They have a 75% re-integration rate. They are even effectively turning around youth violence in the home, which is a crime on the rise here.

Key to this successful model is:

• Staff interacting with young people are educators and are not guards (educators have no role in physical restraint & semi educators can use restraint if required);
• Ensuring that security guards are employed but that they do not interact with the young people;
• Providing adequate staffing. For a 61 bed facility they employ 80 educators, 20 semi educators and 7 security guards (solely security & good order);
• Mandating all staff have a degree qualification;
• Requiring initial induction for young person is set at 20 days and includes full medical & psychological assessment;
• Ensuring each young person is seen by a psychologist daily
• Every young person has an individual plan that is consistently monitored.
• Guaranteeing young people are in a facility as close as possible to their family and that family contact is encouraged and not unreasonably withheld;
• Managers/Directors of facilities are psychologists;
• Having a mix of facilities to meet the complexity and diversity of the youth justice population. An example of this is their secure residences that have a ratio of 11 educators to 10 young people providing individualized programs of psychological support, education and vocational training
• Ensuring facilities are relatively small ( max population is 90); and
• Requiring facilities include autonomous sections that enable young people to prepare for leaving detention.We encourage all teams in the current political football match to call time on a stifling debate about youth justice and provide leadership towards a new model so that our youth detention system tangibly improves. Ariel Couchman
• Director
• Most impressively, the Spanish facilities not only produce better outcomes, but they cost one-third of the common law & order variety in most of the world.

Recent media coverage  about an internal secret report (March 2016 ) to Government about the youth detention system is a missed opportunity for public debate .

Sadly, it has largely generated hysteria about a ‘crisis’ in the youth detention system and fuelled the political football match between two old rivals: ‘Tough on Crime’  and  that perennial underdog  ‘Youth detention system is failing.’

The report recommends :

• a total physical redevelopment of Parkville and an upgrade of other secure youth facilities;
• an increase in staff;
• more permanent , experienced & competent staff; and
• a focus on rehabilitation and not tough -on -crime .

These are sound. Surely the provision of adequate and effective staff and a focus on rehabilitation are a no brainer for a functional youth detention system?  Physical redevelopment is a big one. Until the recent spate of damage and escape incidents it was perhaps not high on the agenda.

The Victorian Government has been slow to bring  about change  however it does have a major internal review near completion. To its credit, the Government has initiated a raft of early intervention and prevention programs to reduce offending . They have also consulted widely and directed significant funding to tackle the the challenging cohort of young people who are engaged in serious and repeat offending.

What is not heartening is the unhelp view of the Matthew Guy’s ‘Tough on Crime’ team, who just wants to put away and forget any young offenders.

If no one else can act as the umpire of good sense, Youthlaw will step up. We challenge all the political parties to support introduction of a new model, such as the youth detention model used in Spain . The Spanish model is highly effective and could easily be introduced in Australia.

23 years ago, Spain had a youth detention system similar to Victoria’s. They were operating in a similar context to us – with overcrowded adult prisons and young people flowing seamlessly into adult prison. They also were dealing with similar types of youth crime.

The success of the Spanish model is clear, as across Spain there is now a 75% success rate of young people reintegrating into society.  Youth detention facilities in Spain rarely have violent incidents, rarely use restraints and security guards represent only a small percentage of their staff. Handcuffs and batons are never used; they have no recorded incidents of self-harm and no reported escapes.

In our view, the keys to this successful model are:

• Ensuring that staff interacting with young people are educators and are not guards (educators have no role in physical restraint & semi educators can use restraint if required);
• Ensuring that security guards are employed but that they do not interact with the young people;
• Providing adequate staffing. For a 61 bed facility they employ 80 educators, 20 semi educators and 7 security guards (solely security & good order);
• Mandating all staff have a degree qualification;
• Requiring initial induction for young person is set at 20 days and includes full medical & psychological assessment;
• Ensuring each young person is seen by a psychologist daily and has an individual plan
• Guaranteeing young people are in a facility as close as possible to their family and that family contact is encouraged and not unreasonably withheld ;.
• Making sure managers/Directors of facilities are psychologists;
• Judges/prosecutors visiting every 3 months;
• Facilities are run by not for profit organisations;
• Ensuring facilities are relatively small ( max population is 90); and
• Requiring facilities include autonomous sections that enable young people to prepare for leaving detention.

The other benefit of the Spanish model is that they have a mix of facilities, including secure residences. The latter often house young people who commit violence against their parents. The facilities have a ratio of 11 educators to 10 young people and each provides a program of psychological support, education and vocational training.

Most impressively, the Spanish facilities not only produce better outcomes, but they cost one-third of those in England.

In addition to the facilities themselves, we can learn from the Spanish example about laws that have been changed to strengthen the objective of re-integration. This includes, at age 18 a young person’s criminal record being cleared.

You can read more about the Spanish model here: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/nov/07/tough-love-young-prisoners-spain-model-prison

We encourage all teams in the current political football match to call time on a stifling debate and make concrete suggestions so that our youth detention system tangibly improves.

-Ariel Couchman, Director