Putting Children First: A rights respecting approach to youth justice in Australia
By Save the Children - Australia
At its best, the youth justice system has the potential to turn around lives, be responsive to the needs of children and young people, provide the supports they need to thrive, and thereby keep communities safer. In recent years, numerous reports and inquiries across Australia and internationally have detailed the negative impacts that contact with the justice system can have on children and young people. This is particularly the case for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people, who are overrepresented across all youth justice systems in Australia and are detained in youth detention facilities at unacceptably high rates. Despite some recent gains and efforts in certain jurisdictions to better utilise prevention and early intervention across the system and support culturally safe practices, youth justice systems in Australia persistently violate child rights. Our youth justice systems are also often not fit-for-purpose to support the needs of children and young people and divert them out of the system for good. Punitive and incarceration-focused policies and practices directly undermine the key outcomes that governments are seeking to achieve through these policies, including to reduce recidivism and improve community safety. This report comes at a time when there has been significant youth justice reform across a number of states and territories in Australia, and a strengthened political imperative at the national level to raise the age of criminal responsibility and ameliorate the ongoing legacy of racial injustice. Right now, more than ever, there is also a heightened public consciousness that demands a new and better approach to youth justice. The report aims to highlight why child rights are important, how these rights are relevant across youth justice systems, where child rights are being undermined in youth justice today and where the greatest opportunities are for reform.
Save the Children - Australia: 2023. 109p.
