New South Wales police have said they intend to keep locking up young offenders and “holding them to account” as part of their youth crime crackdown.
But the Aboriginal Legal Service has called the approach a “draconian measure”, and argues that it will make the problem worse.
The police announced on Monday that it had charged 153 people – including 109 children – with more than 1,400 offences since launching Operation Regional Mongoose last September, mainly to respond to young people allegedly committing “unprecedented” levels of violence during break and enters.
The NSW police assistant commissioner, Rod Smith, told reporters in Dubbo on Monday he believed the youngest offender charged in the operation was 11.
“We intend to keep locking them up, putting them before the court and holding them to account,” he said.
Smith said the police have been working with the government to put in place diversionary programs to support vulnerable children and those at risk of reoffending.
But Karly Warner, chief executive of the Aboriginal Legal Service, said the “punitive” approach of the operation – which last weekend saw police send a riot squad to the regional town of Moree – will only make youth crime worse.
“The riot squad rolling into Moree is such a draconian measure and response to ultimately a regional town crying out for services and things for young people to do,” she said.
The NSW government said last week it would invest $13.4m in a pilot program in Moree, with plans to build bail and support accommodation, improve the delivery of youth services and provide resources for the local and children’s court.
The announcement came alongside the Minns government announcing sweeping new laws that would make it harder for teenagers to get bail and would criminalise “posting and boasting” about offences on social media. The NSW premier, Chris Minns, also ruled out raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14.
Warner said the approach of the police’s operation in Moree and other communities in western NSW, including Dubbo and Tamworth, was of particular concern in light of planned changes to the bail laws.
The Bail Act would be changed to include an extra test for 14- to 18-year-olds charged with committing certain serious break-and-enter or motor vehicle theft offences while on bail for the same offences and seeking further bail.
“The experts who watch this process day in and day out are absolutely horrified by these ill-thought-through changes that are going to make it more dangerous within communities … tougher bail laws have been tried and failed,” Warner said.
“When you put children in prison, you give them an apprenticeship to a life of crime and trauma.
“We have a better and less costly way forward. It involves giving children the services they need to stay off the streets and to be engaged in more productive activities like job training and safe social activities in sport and art and education that actually inspires the safe communities that we all want.”
Smith said 67% of the 153 people charged were on bail at the time of committing an offence.
Smith said the police would be committing more resources to the operation amid “elevated levels of violence”.
“[They’re] forcefully entering people’s homes in the middle of the night, motel rooms, particularly targeting elderly and vulnerable people with weapons and distributing or displaying a lot of violence,” he said.
