Rookie police are being sent to regional areas where they struggle to engage with local communities, who are being left to do the hard work addressing the causes of youth crime, an inquiry has been told.
Bourke Community Working Party chair Pania Tuhu told a NSW parliamentary inquiry on Tuesday the level of community engagement with authorities in the northwest NSW town was "zero".
"They're sending all the rookies straight out of the academy and they're so overwhelmed," she told the probe into rural and regional community safety.
Police need to build community trust and better relationships with locals, she said.
Considerable resources have been allocated to addressing crime for years as the country town's halcyon days as a major inland port disappeared into the past.
Bourke's population has fallen by 42 per cent since 1996 to about 2300 people and it was the most dangerous locale in regional NSW at the end of June 2023, the council's general manager Leonie Brown told the hearing.
Property and violent crime rates were more than 50 per cent higher in regional NSW than in Sydney in 2023, according to NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.
But crime in Bourke was hardly a new problem, MPs were told.
"This has been going on ever since I was a kid, nothing has changed," Ms Tuhu said.
Some issues stemmed from parental responsibility and some adults needed to be shown the way, she said.
"It's generational-cycle stuff we're talking about," Ms Tuhu said.
Bourke Shire councillor Lachlan Ford said crime had always been a factor in the region, but the people behind it were becoming increasingly younger and the offending more violent.
Bourke PCYC club manager Rozaria Suckling said children were wandering the streets at night to escape dysfunctional and violent home environments.
"Honestly, there's nothing we can do to help these kids," she said.
Maranguka Community Hub acting chief executive Maxime Nina said a lot more work needed to be done and the community needed to be supported to do it.
"Families are so broken and fractured in our communities that you've got to help them, and I just don't know if government is positioned sometimes to do that type of work," he said.
Parliamentarians would face riots in their metropolitan electorates if people there faced similar issues, Mr Nina said.
"Because we're conveniently tucked 900km away, it's not addressed," he said.
Bourke Tribal Council member Phil Sullivan lamented inaction from past inquiries, such as the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody held more than three decades ago.
"Our people are still falling by the wayside, in prisons … out on the street, because of that (inaction)," he said.
Another public hearing is scheduled in the state's far west at Broken Hill on Wednesday.
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