Matt Cunningham analysis of NT crime crisis

The pendulum that swung sharply to the left following that notorious Four Corners episode in 2016 might be about to swing back in the opposite direction, writes Matt Cunningham.

“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

It’s early August 2016 and I’m walking around the grounds of the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre with Corrections Commissioner Mark Payne.

Payne’s world has just been thrown into turmoil.

A Four Corners report into the Northern Territory’s youth justice system has broadcast vision of children being sprayed with tear gas at the old Don Dale facility and of 17-year-old detainee Dylan Voller being placed in a restraint chair and spit-hood at the Alice Springs prison.

The outrage is immediate.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull orders a Royal Commission within hours of the program going to air.

Protest rallies are held across the country.

Corrections officers are told not to wear their uniforms in public after being spat at in the street.

Chief minister for the Northern Territory Adam Giles addresses media during a press conference in Parliament House in response to the treatment of juveniles at Don Dale Detention Centre in Berrimah, NT - L to R Chief minister for the Northern Territory Adam Giles, Corrections commissioner Mark Payne and NT Commissioner of Police Reece Kershaw.

But in what might be described as chaos for any normal person, Payne, the mild-mannered former police officer, is as cool as a dry season morning.

And his reference to Newton’s third law will prove prophetic.

Over the next 15 months the Royal Commission will hear from former detainees, ministers, department heads and a range of experts in the field of youth justice.

No evidence will be taken from victims of crime.

The Commission would deliver its final report in November 2017, handing down more than 200 recommendations.

Many of them, particularly those relating to the treatment of children in detention, and the facilities they should be held in, were sensible, and it’s a blight on this government that almost eight years after promising to close Don Dale, it remains open.

In other areas, they have been problematic.

The recommendations relating to child protection leaned more towards progressive ideology than fact-based best-practice and appear to have given little weight to the evidence of former chief magistrate Hilary Hannam.

She told the inquiry the NT’s under-resourced child protection department was “far too hesitant” to take action on at-risk children and had a “relativist approach” to dealing with neglect in Indigenous communities.

“There are many fewer children removed in the Northern Territory, many few Indigenous children, as compared to the substantiated rates of maltreatment,” she said.

Perhaps the biggest issue, however, has been the recommendations contained in chapters 25 and 27, relating to “the path into detention” and “reshaping youth justice”.

These recommendations included raising the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12, removing the criminal offence for a breach of bail, preferencing diversion over a criminal charge even for serious offences, and amending the bail act so a youth should not be denied bail unless they are charged with a serious offence with a probable sentence of detention if convicted, and if they present a serious risk to public safety.

As early as 2019, senior police were privately expressing their concern that their hands were effectively tied when they were trying to deal with young offenders.

In 2021 the Gunner Government reversed some of the changes it had made at the Royal Commission’s recommendation, prompting howls of protest from youth justice advocates.

But the shift back to the centre would be short-lived.

Protests outside the notorious Don Dale Youth Detention Centre. Picture: (A)manda Parkinson

After Michael Gunner’s resignation, the Fyles government raised the age of criminal responsibility, something Gunner had refused to do until the appropriate services were in place to deal with young children who commit crimes.

Meanwhile, public frustration at rising crime rates has risen to boiling point.

Between October 2016 and October 2023, house break-ins across the Territory are up 103 per cent.

In Alice Springs they have risen by 260 per cent.

Robbery and extortion offences across the NT are up by 245 per cent, commercial break-ins up 67 per cent, property damage up 58 per cent and assaults up 73 per cent.

This can’t all be blamed on the Royal Commission but claims that implementing its recommendations would make for a safer Territory seem doubtful at best.

The protest rallies about the treatment of children in detention have been replaced by ones about the treatment of victims of crime.

With an election fewer than eight months away, the Country Liberal Party is promising to reverse many of the policies introduced in response to the Royal Commission. (A Royal Commission, it should be noted, that was called for by a CLP chief minister and ordered by a Liberal Prime Minister).

“This total disempowerment of police and victims means that criminals are the ones holding all the cards and under a CLP Government that I lead if we are successful this August we’ll be flipping that around because criminals should be on the back foot, not the front foot like they are under Labor,” Opposition Leader Lia Finocchiaro said this week.

The pendulum that swung sharply to the left following that Four Corners episode might be about to swing back in the opposite direction.

Mark Payne has long since retired and moved interstate, but he must be watching on and thinking, “I told you so”.

Originally published as Matt Cunningham analysis of NT crime crisis