Unlike other mainland states, SA was not settled by convicts.

Colonial promoter Edward Gibbon Wakefield conceived of a land populated by social progressives and religious dissenters — in short, those who were of permissive morality and those who kept to themselves for fear of prejudice.

News_Image_File: Edward Gibbon Wakefield

This no doubt appealed to Wakefield due to his own tarnished past, having served jail time over forged letters that tricked a teenage heiress into marriage.

Adelaide has, as a result, always had two sides. It is accepting of women's rights, nurturing of the arts, tolerant of religions and forward-thinking in governance.

It has also proved a fertile breeding ground for ideas distasteful to the general public and deviant acts carried out beneath a tightly-woven shroud of confidentiality. Try things, but don't question your neighbours if they go wrong. Don't upset those in power. Don't talk about the bad stuff.

For decades, that duality defined Adelaide crime.

Its shameful culture of sexual assault and deviancy (most notoriously The Family ), its infamously gruesome murders ( Truro, the bodies in the barrels) and the bizarre tinge to its offences (from con men pretending to be rock stars to elderly couples blaming wombats for malnourished dogs) were a direct result of that permissive/secretive environment.

Adelaide was a city of churches in daylight and a city of evil by night.

Things began to change with the turn of the century and, by 2011-12, Adelaide's criminal make-up had altered dramatically.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the number of offenders charged in that financial year rose by 15 per cent. The number of repeat offenders, meanwhile, dropped by 14 per cent.

Clearly a new criminal element was coming into play — and it was coming from the under-20 set. South Australia was the only state to record an increase in youth offending (11 per cent) during 2011-12.

Though the crimes they committed were no less unsettling or heinous, the young offenders were driven by different factors than their predecessors.

Excessive drinking and vindictive use of the internet became the norm. Younger offenders were more savage, their ferocity challenging the public's perception of how children and teenagers act.

News_Rich_Media: Watch Giovanni Focarelli's video to promote the Comanchero motorcycle gang.

Many of these young people were inducted into crime by groups such as the New Boys street gang, which later morphed to become an arm of the Comancheros Motorcycle Club — then switched back to its original allegiance when the local crew fell out with "interstate management".

Meanwhile, the Rann Government's tilt against other outlaw motorcycle gangs — particularly the Finks, now repatched as the Mongols — romanticised and politicised them for impressionable eyes. Bikies shifted from being thick-necked, burly men in leather and denim to fleet-footed youngsters in hoodies, shuffling nervously even as they executed men in Wingfield businesses to earn their colours.

Today, advertiser.com.au explores six examples of the new breed of criminal becoming tragically commonplace in the state's courts and prisons.

Often drunk, sometimes drugged, motivated by misplaced love or directionless hate, usually under the age of 25, these are the offenders whose actions may well alter the world's perception of Adelaide — and not for the better.

NEXT:

The victims were very different, but their assailants were frightful in their similarities — disturbing examples of a new generation of South Australian killers.

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