Morning mail: youth justice system in crisis, call to legalise cannabis in Victoria, how to befriend your neighbours

A protester dressed in prison restraints during a rally in Perth against a plan to move 20 high-risk juvenile inmates out of Banksia Hill juvenile detention centre to an adult maximum-security prison. Photograph: Richard Wainwright/AAP

Good morning. Australia’s juvenile justice system is facing a reckoning, with calls to reform the system that in some jurisdictions incarcerates children as young as 10. Vladimir Putin will hold a meeting of his security council today after an explosion that caused the collapse of part of a bridge linking the Crimean peninsula with Russia at the weekend.

The juvenile justice system is in crisis and needs urgent reform in Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Tasmania, say the families of incarcerated young people, lawyers and human rights advocates. Federal, state and territory governments have committed to reducing juvenile detention rates by 30% by 2031. Holistic and trauma-informed programs and early intervention schemes need to be put in place to divert children at risk of ending up in detention, according to Amnesty International’s Rodney Dillion. “The detention centres end up being like a kind of apprenticeship to the big prisons, the adult prisons,” he says. “What’s gonna happen to those kids that come out of that system?”