It is important to know your limitations. At First Step, we do very little work with young people, so children and young people are not our area of expertise (as a rule it takes people about 20 years from first problematic drug use to seeking help, a curiously close number of years to the delay in reporting childhood sexual abuse).
What we are experts in, however, is what happens when children and young people have a difficult start in life, and don’t get the support they need. Because we see them 20 years later, after a lifetime of resilience, yes, but also a lifetime of unnecessary pain and loss.
This week’s changes to bail laws are a source of disappointment for many of us, and they should be for all of us.
You see, everyone agrees that community safety is paramount, but that is not what has actually been prioritised. Basically, making bail laws the same for children as they are for adults may indeed make the streets safer in the immediate term. But, surely, the long term impact is far more important, is what we should all be prioritising, and what should be the basis of governmental decision-making.
I’m a bleeding heart, lefty, progressive type. I care about social justice, about kids who grow up in poverty (or are exposed to family violence and worse) getting a decent chance in life. But let’s put all that to the side for the moment and totally forget about human rights or justice. Let’s just focus on ‘community safety.’
If a child commits a crime and is remanded (imprisoned) while awaiting trial, then of course they are less of a threat to the community, in the immediate sense. But this is the only question that matters in terms of community safety: Which approach (more or less childhood imprisonment) is more likely to lead to a lifetime of offending?
There is a wealth of research indicating a direct correlation between age of first imprisonment and continued criminal behaviour. There are all sorts of theories around ‘criminal identity’, ‘social learning theory’, ‘disrupted development’ etc etc. Why do we not discuss these? Why do we not look at the evidence and consult the experts. Yes, I know, the public pressure the bloody newspapers. Well, it’s not good enough. We simply label a kid with a crime (e.g. Car-jacking with a weapon, yes it’s horrible), be shocked and angry, and tighten bail laws with zero evidence that we are helping the community in any meaningful way. It’s very, very disappointing.
But there is decency in well-informed people. There is no movement in Australia to reintroduce the death penalty. And that’s because we think there is something sacred about human life, and because we know for a fact that mistakes are made. It’s socially unacceptable for the Commonwealth of Australia to murder people. If you tell the stories, explain the facts, interview the parents, enhance support services, document the success stories . . . then we can make incarcerating children socially unacceptable too.
| Patrick Lawrence Chief Executive Officer |
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