The Finocchiaro CLP Government has passed changes to the Youth Justice Act in Parliament on urgency Thursday night, that will see the use of spit hoods on children reinstated, the principle of detention as a last resort removed, increased powers for youth justice officers to use force on youth inmates and the reintroduction of the use of restraint devices and dogs, essentially rolling back the changes made in response to the royal commission into youth detention in 2017.
The government used its numbers to pass the reforms, which were condemned by the NT and federal children’s commissioners, health and legal experts, Indigenous leaders and organisations, as well as community advocacy groups.
Corrections Minister Gerard Maley said in Parliament the reforms were necessary to deliver the government’s mandate to reduce crime.
“It delivers a clear message that serious offending will be met with serious consequences and frontline officers will have the tools they need to ensure safety, order and accountability,” he said.
“This bill is required because Territorians demand community safety and Territorians demand consequences for actions.”
The new bill also orders judges to consider a young offender’s entire criminal record if being sentenced for adult crimes and expands the list of offences that are ineligible for youth diversion.
National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds said the NT Government’s changes “fly in the face of the evidence we have of what will make communities safer”.
“We know that making the justice system more punitive does not work to prevent crime by children,” she said in a statement.
“What the evidence shows is that when children are locked up and brutalised by the justice system, they are more likely to go on to commit more serious and violent crimes. This does nothing to make our communities safer.”
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Katie Kiss also criticised the legislation, saying the changes did not address underlying issues of crime, such as poverty, homelessness, disability, health and mental issues, as well as domestic, family and sexual violence.
“We should not be further damaging young people and any hope they may have for a better future by introducing harsher measures that don’t actually make communities safer,” Ms Kiss said.
“What we need our governments – including the Northern Territory Government – to be providing [is] culturally appropriate support for vulnerable children and their families that’s delivered in a coordinated way by suitably trained professionals.”
Both federal commissioners urged the government to “listen to the experts” on the evidence.
Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro ruled out listening to evidence by experts earlier in the week, suggesting on radio that “if [the] evidence-[based] approach worked, we wouldn’t be talking about this right now”, adding that the NT, when it comes to crime, was “in the worst possible position [that] we’ve ever been in”.
On Thursday, she rejected calls from 45 NT paediatricians in a letter asking her to reconsider her approach to the youth justice reforms.
“There is no evidence that criminalising a child’s behaviour deters an individual from offending, this in fact does the opposite and entrenches criminal behaviour for that young person,” the letter stated.
Greens MLA Kat McNamara asked Ms Finocchiaro about the letter in Parliament.
“My advice to you and to the 45 paediatricians who wasted their time writing to me, is that you should spend more time supporting Territory children, because that’s your job. And I’ll do my job, which is to run the Northern Territory,” Ms Finocchiaro said.
“And they can do their job, which is to look after sick children.”
Opposition Labor Leader Selena Uibo was also critical of the Youth Justice Act reforms, criticising the government for not being upfront about the details and ignoring the expert evidence, including the recommendations of the royal commission into the detention of children in the NT.
“Almost every one of these measures…spit hoods, dog control, mechanical restraints, were either explicitly condemned or ruled out by the royal commission,” Ms Uibo said.
Labor repeatedly raised during debate that the government had rushed changes to the Youth Justice Act four times this year, adding that “each time, crime has gotten worse”.
Ms Finocchiaro indicated earlier in the week that more changes were coming, involving the youth diversion process and measures to “provide community service choices for youth boot camps”.
Ms Finocchiaro also came under criticism from Aboriginal leaders and organisations for not consulting with them about her government’s approach to dealing with crime, with the NT’s four land councils last week labelling her government’s policies “overtly racist”.
Independent Member for Mulka Yingiya Guyula moved a censure motion against the government on Tuesday, but was shut down by the CLP. He said the motion was brought to condemn the government for “their gross neglect to consult and work with Aboriginal leaders, communities and organisations to create solutions to current problems of crime and disadvantage”.
During debate in Parliament on Thursday, Mr Guyula said he was deeply concerned about the government’s apathy towards young offenders.
“We all know that even though they may show they are tough on the outside and their behaviour may be rough, on the inside, they are just tired, sad, hurt child,” he said.
“They need to be made to feel proud of who they can bet they need to find their gifts and talents. And to have a government that doesn’t care is very distressing.
“People who have committed an offence should be held accountable. There must be justice for victims, but it should not be the kind of justice that causes more harm and drives people even further into a life of crime. We need to see justice that breaks the cycle of offending and brings opportunities for everyone.”
The Youth Justice Act bill passed 16 to seven in Parliament Thursday night.
“For too long, youth offenders have been given chance after chance, while victims were ignored and [youth justice officers] were left without the tools they need,” Mr Maley said in a statement Thursday night.
“These laws will give courts greater discretion to respond to repeat and serious offending, and ensure our youth justice system puts victims and community safety first.”
Mr Maley revealed in Parliament the legislation could not be gazetted until next week because Administrator Hugh Heggie is currently on holiday.
Your damned if you do and damned if you dont!
Good on the CLP in attempting to address the walking crime waves!
Here is a de-identified young uns court history just to remind you what fills the courts!
QTY=Court appearances for that unique Case Numer!
QTY Case Num offences
24 123409 “engage in conduct that contravenes dvo”
24 124240 “aggravated assault
engage in conduct that contravenes dvo”
23 124256 “engage in conduct that contravenes dvo”
16 12426x “damage to property
armed with an offensive weapon”
7 124261 “breach of bail adult”
7 12426x “damage to property
armed with an offensive weapon
aggravated assault”
6 124272 “breach of bail adult”
6 124314 “breach of bail”
6 125027 “breach of bail”
6 125107 “breach of bail”
5 124314 breach of bail adult”
2 124339 “breach of bail adult”
1 123409 “engage in conduct that contravenes dvo””
1 224240 “aggravated assault
engage in conduct that contravenes dvo”
1 124256 “aggravated assault
engage in conduct that contravenes dvo”
1 124313 “breach of bail adult”
Clarification: Thats one person from 2023 til today!
136 Court appearances,
16 individual case numbers
22 charges!
Go hard the CLP! Cancel Mueseums and funding bailing out insolvent indiginous organisations and Build another Jail!
“My advice to you and to the 45 paediatricians who wasted their time writing to me, is that you should spend more time supporting Territory children, because that’s your job. And I’ll do my job, which is to run the Northern Territory,” Ms Finocchiaro said.
~It’s really stunning to see the arrogance and condescension which spews out of LiaR Finocchiaro’s mouth often times.
That’s not leadership. That’s leadershit.
Someone is beginning to really fell the pressure….
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“For too long, youth offenders have been given chance after chance, while victims were ignored and [youth justice officers]” Mr Maley said in a statement Thursday night.
“These laws will give courts greater discretion to respond to repeat and serious offending, and ensure our youth justice system puts victims and community safety first.”
“This bill is required because Territorians demand community safety, and Territorians demand consequences for actions.”
~So, the CLP Careless Lamebrained Party debate framing is becoming clearer.
You had LiaR hitting us with some form of “criminal apologists” the other day like George W Bush’s famous false choice nonsense of:
You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists.
Now you’ve got car mechanic Maley framing the conversation around the idea that ‘anyone who disagrees with our big and strong ‘tough on crime’ policies is really “ignoring victims” and is “not putting community safety first” and “doesn’t want consequences”.
But this is just a linguistic game being played. Political Messaging For Dummies.
After shutting down any debate recently, now mocking doctors for trying to help and advise, creating ad hominem attacks towards anyone who has a different viewpoint on how to address this long standing problem, we are really seeing the how little actual working knowledge is held within this group.
They are completely useless and completely out of genuine ideas.
…
Once you start to polarise the general population as: either with you or against you (while at the same time throwing negative adjectives at them repeatedly) then you’re digging yourself a big hole that you’ll find it harder and harder to ever get out of.
Curiously, we had a discussion about this the other day with some of our neighbours. Someone mentioned the deliberate dysfunction we were talking about and agreed with us that it pays for the place to be a mess because that validates the idea that someone can fix it. Who better than the Party voted in to do so. Bingo.
Except this Party wasn’t really voted in; the ALP Also Lamebrained Party were actually voted out. The CLP had the biggest campaign budget and so easily mis-sold the idea that only they could govern.
It’s like racing Usain Bolt in a 100m sprint. He turns up drunk, stinking of cigarettes and halfway along the track he trips over and falls, watching you stroll past him to take the gold medal.
You didn’t really beat him in a 100m race; he lost it by being pissed and falling on his face and then you walked over the line.
Same way that we now have LiaR Finocchiaro and her motley crew sitting in Parliament pretending to know what they’re doing.
…
Another intriguing aspect of the current situation is the belligerent and stubborn refusal to entertain the idea that other people might know what they’re talking about and might, if you sat down and talked with them, share some of that knowledge with you to help you govern.
We don’t think LiaR wants anything to be fixed. In her mind, she needs to portray herself as intelligent, knowledgeable and someone who has all the answers to problems other people have struggled to find long term solutions for, for decades, no, hundreds of years.
She does this by ignoring all offers of help, constantly self-promoting as a community safety advocate (refusing to accept that her shortest of short term fixes will come back to bite her in the not too distant future) and attacks anyone – medical people, lawyers, citizens, journalists etc – who dares to suggest that her ideas are doomed to fail.
She’s bought in to that projection so much now that she can’t give it up for fear of looking weak and useless as a so-called ‘leader’.
What she has failed to grasp, or whoever else is advising her has failed to grasp, is that by digging in further to her isolationist position she is in fact creating the very image of weakness that she is desperately trying to avoid.
It’s beginning to look a bit like the demise of Hitler (no we’re not suggesting they’re anything like the Nazi party), just that as Adolf was losing the war, his armies getting slaughtered, defections all around him, heaps of money down the drain, he retreated to his bunker and became more alone, more lonely and more crazy with it. He refused advice and refused to admit he was losing and then we all know what happened after that.
The stubbornness became negligent. Sound familiar?
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‘The Youth Justice Act bill passed 16 to seven in Parliament Thursday night.’
~Oh by the way NT Independent, can you start publishing the names of which MLAs voted for this Youth Justice Act bill this time and any other contentious documents next time?
We want to know who’s responsible so we can target them for the political bin fire that will happen at the next election clear out.
Now there’s some consequences we like! 😉
You’ll find the names and contact details of all 17 CLP members who voted for it on the Legislative Assembly website.
They remember the Headline
“Ken Vowles, Jeff Collins and Scott McConnell dumped from NT Government’s Labor Caucus”
16 of them voted for it Phil. The 17th, the member for Drysdale, was absent, unwell.
The advice of the so called “experts” is what got us into this terrible mess of crime and violence in the first place.
The only solution to growing violent crime is long prison sentences to get the violent criminals off our streets and to protect the law abiding public.
They where elected to do something about crime, good on them for trying.
For to long the bleeding hearts and hand wringers have had control, which has gotten us to the current situation.
About time. It’s obvious the touchy feely approach does not work despite what the bleeding hearts claim. Go hard Lia..the great majority of the NT is behind you.
Interesting that the government ‘cherry picks’ the stats that suit them yet defy the evidence-based ones that don’t.
The ‘balanda knows best’ rhetoric is being peddled to support their position. It’s been that way for over 250 years.
Pity the parliament refuses to heed Yingia’s wise counsel. Working together with Aboriginal leadership around the jurisdiction means walking WITH them; not IN FRONT of them.
As Angel documents: “My advice to you and to the forty five pediatricians who wasted their time writing to me . . . because that’s your job”. “And I’ll do my job which is to run the Northern Territory”. – Ms Finochiaro said. Does that mean C.M. excludes communal interests whatsoever? A genuine case of I’m above and beyond the Electorate? “Dictator” A ruler who has unrestricted authority who has taken control? Well certainly that explains the obliteration of both: ACCOUNTABILITY / TRANSPARENCY. Even the possibility of Democracy?
Graeme, respectfully, pediatricians do a particular role and do not set policy or agendas for the public!
These lovely kids are walking crime waves today and will become adult walking crime waves into their old age!
They have had carte blanche with the courts under the Failed Labour Scum and I hope the new and current legislation chips away at their behaviour!
The kids are breaking into my home, stole my car as well as breaking into everyones elses home and they are superb at it! Cant and wont ever get a job but stealing is their goto option!
Good on the Government for not pandering to interest groups and jailing/reprimanding the walking crime waves!
Okey Dokey, allow us to have a quick attempt to address these points without going into too much detail:
Most people when they have a problem, more so a complicated problem with many parts to it, let’s think of medical problems as an example, will search out someone who is expert in that area to help them solve that problem. That’s why we have specialist doctors and legal people, car mechanics who only work on one brand or model, musicians who practice with a specific instrument.
If you wanted to play a classical music symphony well you’d go looking for musical experts for all those instruments, not just say “hey I know a few chords on the guitar, I’ve got this!”
Not listening to expert knowledge in a field you’re not familiar with yourself is only going to end badly in our household’s opinion.
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Next: ‘the only solution is longer prison sentences’ coupled with these types of descriptions: Bleeding hearts, Hand wringers, Touchy feely, Soft on crime created all our problems etc, Go hard, Walking crime waves, Pandering to interest groups, Jailing/reprimanding.
We understand that people are angry and see failure everywhere and want someone or something to blame. We understand that people want a quick fix, they want something to change now!
History shows us that crime problems don’t have a quick fix. No one has been able to solve that puzzle quickly anywhere in the world. Some ideas are better than others but on the flip side some ideas are much worse than others.
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Allow us an analogy: imagine you had a patch of land and you wanted to turn it into a beautiful garden.
You do all the usual things to prepare, finishing with planting your seeds and watering it occasionally.
Your plants and flowers start to grow but most of them are dying, not growing properly, weak, have no flowers etc.
You try everything external but nothing seems to work: amount of sunlight and shade, filtered water, playing them music and speaking encouraging words to them, pest eradication….until you realise it’s the soil that is the problem. Until you fix and support the soil, it doesn’t matter what you do to the seedlings which manage to sprout, the soil underneath them doesn’t have the nutrients and nourishment required to sustain them.
Until we deal with the foundational and longer term issues which need a comprehensive social and systemic approach then we are not going to be able to address the underlying socioeconomic factors contributing to criminal behaviour.
Nothing we do short term, like harsher sentences, is going to set us up for success in solving this difficult puzzle long term.
Reconstitute and nourish your soil otherwise very little will grow in it.
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Another way to think about this is: what is our ultimate goal?
We think it is better to approach this from a different angle.
We should be trying to create a society and community where the positive incentives to stay out of prison are paramount. Where people don’t want to leave their society, big or small, by ending up in prison away from it and the people in it.
We don’t achieve this by harsher sentencing in our opinion.
If any commenter has evidence of a place where ‘tough on crime’ policies has worked in the past then please share it. In fact we published a link in a previous article which showed the death sentence in the USA had zero effect on the imprisoning rate. Actually, the places with the death penalty had higher crime rates.
Now, if we want our young people to ‘behave themselves properly’ and not commit any more crime (reduce or eliminate recidivism) then there are other proven ways to do that, which include:
Justice Reinvestment
Genuine rehabilitation programs
Addressing root causes of criminal behaviour
Community-based interventions
Restorative justice models
Crime rates are influenced by many different factors, including harsh socio-economic conditions, poor education, lack of employment opportunities, and over-policing. Harsh penalties alone don’t do anything to significantly reduce crime rates without addressing these underlying issues.
Adopting a more holistic approach to drivers of criminal behaviour, by including heaps of different interests and knowledgeable people in the discussion is the only way to go in our minds.
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If one person had all the answers then she wouldn’t be a politician in the NT; she’d be an internationally recognised super star on the Ted Talk circuit being lauded by leaders and politicians the world over.
You also can’t police your way out of a crime epidemic no matter how hard you try, even the Police agree with this. They are like one of the gardeners who come in and continually spray chemicals on your plants then wonder why they’re not thriving. *think soil*
Long term solutions take planning and care. They need support from all sectors and they need proper funding. Lastly, if we throw in a bit of attention and understanding to everyone, if we can guide them to take a different path instead of threatening them, not locking them up at 10 or 11 years old, treating them like animals, giving them the long term outlook that assists them in thinking about making better decisions then we believe this will start the process of change in the minds of those young people.
People with nothing to lose, generally, won’t be swayed by harsh consequences. They’ll think: so what?
Of course, not everyone is the same, there has to be serious consequence for serious offending, we agree but if we want to hold out the hope for long term change then we have to encourage a Justice Reinvestment model to happen, we have to take more care of the soil, otherwise we risk repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
Long term repeat offenders help no one: the offender, the victims, the prison system, the families involved on both sides, society, cost to the Government, reduced economic productivity etc.
Harsher sentences without rehabilitation don’t help in achieving any of that. They do the opposite.
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Here’s a decent Justice Reinvestment article to read over the weekend and beyond (click the blue Download button):
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256028081_Building_Communities_Not_Prisons_Justice_Reinvestment_and_Indigenous_Over-Representation
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One last idea, slightly out of left field but bear with us.
I personally read about this a long time ago and its novelty approach made sense and raised a smile.
Think about it as playing to people’s strengths.
Young teenage computer hackers who break into corporate and government networks are often offered jobs, based on their unique skill sets, in places whose job it is to secure computer networks.
They got to test the weaknesses of these, as they did before, but this time they got regularly and legitimately paid, weren’t risking jail time for doing so and the places they tested became more secure after the advice from the same hackers who were now working for the good guys.
They became a net good for society rather than the opposite.
Maybe we could do the same with some of our young ‘property hackers’?
Win win.
Fully agree “These kids are walking crime waves today and ‘may’ become adult walking crime-waves into old age”. Fully understand such an out-come indeed possible; if not likely. Frustration, oft-times very difficult to moderate. Evenso . . . our C.M.’s shooting from the hip in defiance exceeds an acceptable authority? Particularly so given levels of experience. Indigenous child / youth criminality in my experience can only be addressed effectively subject to a strong familial connection or acceptable, adult presence? Incarceration, even brutalization, indeed a long shot? Boot Camps . . . naught but a challenge.
For those crying foul, I suggest you take a couple home and look after them. Having had my place broken into several times, a vehicle vandalised, not prepared to go into the CBD unless urgent, be home by 5 pm daily and locked up inside my fortress, no evening outings, surrounded by lights, cameras and alarms, tell me it’s a good way to live. Lock these mongrels up, stack them, rack them and throw the key away. They may just wake up one day and decide there are better places to be. As for families being involved, these kids would not be in the trouble they are if families were interested.
“Gotta get the kids money” that’s the only interest many families have had and we are paying for it.
Do you think maybe one day you’ll wake up and decide there are better places to be?
Excellent idea GBC, 2 for each Judge and 3 for The Angle on Jims shoulder.
Maybe we start with a trial run in Parliament.
MLAs in spit hoods —
purely for public safety.
Mainly so we don’t have to see them.
The statistical correlations on juvenile crime are that crime accelerated when the ALP and bleeding hearts held sway. Time to get real again. And to hell with the Royal Commission that was corrupt before it started.
That said, the Government plan will indeed reduce current crime, because criminals will not be turned back onto the streets to victimize us yet again, but it does not address the root causes. Nor do the arguments put forward by the bleeding hearts and ideologues.
There is a three-thousand-year-saying that 99% of wisdom is outside of government (if you don’t mind an updated paraphrase). But what it means is that government should go to the community for suggested ideas. “The community” does not mean NGOs, funded organisational empires, clinicians, professionals, or experts. It means ordinary folk, who are way smarter than politicians think they are. All eight successful national referenda proved this, including the most recent.
“Mr Maley revealed in Parliament the legislation could not be gazetted until next week because Administrator Hugh Heggie is currently on holiday”.
Normally when someone is on leave there is a deputy who fulfils their functions. In this case, why is Ms Fran Kilgariff AM, Deputy of the Administrator of the Northern Territory, not fulfilling the role of the Administrator?