Authorised and published by the Victorian Government, 1 Treasury Place Melbourne Victoria 3000 July 2017 If you would like to receive this publication in an accessible format, such as large print or audio, please email [email protected] Also published on justice.vic.gov.au Meeting needs and reducing offending Youth justice review and strategy Part 1 July 2017 Penny Armytage Professor James Ogloff AM Foreword Victoria’s statutory youth justice services operate in a changing environment. Youth justice has a substantial responsibility to act in accordance with the laws that govern them and the policies and procedures that guide them. They are tasked with ensuring they care for and supervise some of the state’s most vulnerable young people. They must provide high-quality interventions so that these young offenders fulfil their obligations to the courts and address their offending behaviour and the harm they caused their victims. Youth justice services must also promote public safety while acting in the interests of both the young offender and the community. Striking the balance between these sometimes competing interests in our contemporary society is not simple. It requires consideration of the nature and causes of youth crime, as well as what works with young people who are still developing. These young people do not always have the maturity to fully appreciate the consequences of their conduct, either in the short or longer term. We recognise the challenges facing the increasingly diverse youth in today’s fast-paced and changing world. Charlie Taylor’s words (from his recent review of the youth justice system in England and Wales) resonate with us: It is right that children who break the law are dealt with differently to adults. Children act impulsively and often do not appreciate the consequences of their actions; they are not emotionally developed and may struggle to communicate effectively. This is particularly true of so many children who offend, who have learning or speech and communication problems. But children also have great strengths on which to build and are capable of rapid and extraordinary change. There needs to be a shift in the way society, including central and local government, thinks about Youth Justice so that we see the child first and the offender second. Offending should not mean forfeiting the right to childhood. Taylor 2016, paras. 6 and 9 Many of the offenders with whom the youth justice system works do not have many of the supports that are routinely available to most children and young people. Many are victims, as well as perpetrators, of crime, and many have backgrounds that do not excuse their offending but have undoubtedly contributed to their involvement in the criminal justice system. Tragically, to date, the youth justice system has not broken the cycle of offending for too many young offenders. For more than half of young offenders, they penetrate further and further into the criminal justice system over their life’s course. We were tasked with reviewing the youth justice system at a time when Victoria is experiencing some very confronting youth crime. The nature of this crime is challenging to both the community and the agencies collectively charged with keeping our community safe. The system is attracting unprecedented attention and the Victorian Government is called upon to do more when adverse events, such as riots and escapes, question the efficacy of current arrangements. The community is understandably frustrated, frightened and fearful of the brazen acts of some young offenders. As a result, the Victorian youth justice system, which had for many years been praised for its approach and lauded as the most progressive and effective in our nation, has been severely criticised and exposed. Unfortunately, its past achievements neither protected it from, nor prepared it for, its current challenges. Many factors contributed to its inability to meet the current challenges. Perhaps its history of success made it complacent. The complex and fragmented organisational structure may have made it difficult to effect change. It may be that it was overshadowed by more pressing considerations relating to the care and protection of the statutory child welfare system. It also could have been disadvantaged by its relative isolation as a comparatively small system, so it did not keep abreast of reforms across like systems ii Meeting needs and reducing offending globally and nationally. Its lack of transparency and rigorous external scrutiny may have contributed individually or collectively to its lack of responsiveness. Whatever the reasons, the system was caught off guard by the changing nature of youth offending and the complexity of young people’s needs. It did not heed early warning signs echoed in many external reviews, events and research about the need for change over the past decade. Service levels have deteriorated significantly, signalling the need for substantial change. Over many years, Victoria successfully addressed the needs of young people, as evidenced by only a small number of Victorians coming into contact with the youth justice system. Once in the system, however, their outcomes have not been good – evidenced by high rates of recidivism and many young people proceeding to the adult criminal justice system. The current state of a system – of which we were once so proud and with which we have been involved for some decades – has distressed many. We were confronted by some of the issues we observed and analysed, as no doubt will those who read this report. The system has become insular and resistant to change. The current state of the system and the ongoing critical incidents to which it responds made this Review confronting. Victoria is home to many leading researchers and experts in adolescent health, development, violence and offending, and the system reflects pockets of innovation. However, as a whole, the youth justice system has stagnated and failed to adopt new evidence or responses. High-level indicators across the system acted as a shield against reform. The decline in the number of young people entering the statutory youth justice system was attributed to the Victorian youth justice approach. This view led to a whole-of-system failure to accept that, from first contact with youth justice, young people were unlikely to receive the rehabilitation programs and interventions they need – cycling in and out of the system. Young people previously involved with youth justice would then go on to reoffend at very high frequency. The system delivered fewer and fewer interventions over the years, with young people subject to very limited evidence-based program interventions that address offending. Rehabilitation efforts devolved to over-reliance on unstructured, one-to-one counselling by psychologists in the custodial facilities and community. The exception was establishing Parkville College, although recent system pressures make it increasingly challenging for all young people to attend school appropriately. The community and custodial workforce do not have clarity about their functions and, over time, their roles have become blurred and chaotic. They are frustrated at the lack of time, structures and support available to provide the rehabilitation work required to address offending and to support young people towards safe, healthy and productive futures. The detrimental decline in programs has coincided with a lack of transparency in, and evaluation of, the outcomes of the youth justice system, with no forward strategy for continual service review and improvement. Although fewer young people enter the system, there has been a troubling increasing trend in the prevalence of young people who have committed crimes against the person. The system has not responded adequately to the challenges of the growing number of more serious offenders. Also concerning is the rise in the number of young people on remand and the corresponding consistent decrease in the ratio of sentenced to remanded youth. The Victorian community has struggled to grapple with, and understand, how a system could get to this stage. The increasing and unprecedented violence and the system’s inability to address the offending of the approximate 1,700 young people who are supervised by Youth Justice each year has received significant negative media attention. The extent of the decline in the system is very disconcerting for those who have been involved with youth justice in the past, or on the fringes of the system. However, we should not despair at this current confluence of very difficult phenomena. Just as young people in the system so often show incredible resilience and capacity to change, the Victorian youth iii Meeting needs and reducing offending justice system has a demonstrated capacity to evolve creatively and resiliently. At its heart, Victoria’s youth justice system has both a strong foundation and the building blocks to evolve. We also have effective police diversion and strong social services, reducing the number of young people sentenced by the Children’s Court. The Victorian Government has demonstrated its commitment to improve the system by: • announcing urgent legislative reforms • injecting significant resources at the preventative, early intervention and tertiary ends of the spectrum • committing to a new custodial facility • introducing machinery of government changes to the system administration by transferring it from the Department of Health and Human Services to the Department of Justice and Regulation. It is all too common for governments and services to accede to populist notions that getting ‘tough on crime’ will remediate the problems seen. The government has resisted such a reactive stance and has shown considerable restraint. Indeed, we must remember that no study has shown that offending is reduced by increasing penalties and conditions. By contrast, the evidence of what works relies on responsive and humane services that simultaneously instill a sense of responsibility in young people while meeting their broader needs.