‘Shaved heads and tatts’: Juvenile Justice staff watch for extremists

Juvenile justice staff are undergoing extreme right-wing training to identify and divert vulnerable detainees from carrying out violent acts in the wake of the Christchurch massacre.

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Juvenile detention officers are being trained to identify inmates at risk of becoming right-wing extremists in the wake of the Christchurch massacre.

They are being told to watch for youths getting new tattoos or extreme hairstyles, or displaying worrying behavioural changes or extreme ideological beliefs, with the aim of making early interventions.

The program, conducted in the past few weeks, is part of a pilot at two juvenile justice centres where there has been extreme right-wing activity.

Brenton Tarrant faces multiple counts of murder following the Christchurch massacre.

It will now be rolled out across the state as the threat of extremism rises following the New Zealand mosque attacks by NSW-born Brenton Tarrant, a white supremacist who killed 50 people.

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Peta Lowe, the Juvenile Justice director in charge of the Countering Violent Extremism unit, said: “What happens in juvenile justice tends to reflect what is happening in the broader community, and so we are going to see more far right extremism in the system.

“Staff in locations where there has been particular activity have undergone the training module, with young people engaged as part of the pilot.”

Juvenile Justice director in charge of the Countering Violent Extremism unit, Peta Lowe.

Ms Lowe, who advises juvenile justice centres in Australia and overseas on countering extremism, said early intervention was the key, with most young offenders already showing violent behaviour.

She told the Australasian Youth Justice conference in Sydney last week that violent extremism was not just an adult issue. Of all the inmates in Goulburn Supermax, Juvenile Justice had involvement with three-quarters of them at some point, she said.

The shooting of police accountant Curtis Cheng by Parramatta schoolboy Farhad Jabar in 2015 and the radicalisation of Australian foreign fighter Khaled Sharrouf were two examples where changes in behaviour of young people needed to be taken seriously.

“The sad thing is that if we had of known what we were looking for in Farhad we could have definitely changed his life and the life of Curtis Cheng and his family,” she said.

“Sharrouf was a juvenile justice client. I’m not suggesting we should have known what to do, but we know now.”

In December, there were 261 juveniles in custody in NSW, including five for terror-related offences.

Another XX teens are on the radar of the Countering Violent Extremism unit. Across Australia, around one in 10 people charged with terrorism were under 18 at the time.

Originally published as ‘Shaved heads and tatts’: Juvenile Justice staff watch for extremists