Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton on need for youth summit

WE NEED bold thinking and new ideas for steering wayward youths back onto the right track. And we all have a role, writes Victoria’s top cop Graham Ashton.

Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton. Picture: Andrew Tauber

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TWO days from now, I will be asking some of our state’s foremost experts from across a range of sectors to wrestle with a significant and emerging issue: why do young people become involved in increasingly violent crime, and what can we do to stop this?

History tells us that young people’s involvement in crime is not new, and thankfully, across the board, fewer young people are committing offences today than previously. The vast majority are doing well.

But what concerns me most — and it is a problem causing real harm and angst in our community — is that the behaviour of those who are offending is escalating at an alarming rate.

All too often, we are hearing disturbing and confronting details about the latest home invasion or carjacking.

These are the crimes of choice for some young offenders who have little concern for the terrifying and dramatic impact they have on their victims. They simply have to stop.

It’s important we keep this offending in perspective — the numbers are relatively small, and, statistically, the chances of you falling victim to this crime are very low. But I know this is cold comfort for those who have been impacted because the effects are often extremely traumatic.

We can all relate to this: the prospect of being woken in the middle of the night by groups of aggressive and potentially armed young men is truly terrifying.

Victoria Police is absolutely focused on doing whatever it takes to bring this under control. Day in, day out, our police are on the streets preventing, deterring, investigating and arresting offenders.

Keeping Victorians safe is our absolute priority, it is what we are here to do. But to understand what is really driving this disturbing new trend demands that we all as a community front up to some difficult questions.

Victoria Police are dealing with violent crime that is escalating at an alarming rate. Picture: Valeriu Campan

Why is this happening and what can we all do to help stop this happening? All too often, it is the police who are asked to deal with the consequences of societal issues; be that problems with drugs, unemployment, family violence or mental health.

Like many of these issues, those involving young people today are not ones police alone can fix.

We need a collective effort to better understand the drivers and factors behind these trends so we can stop these crimes from happening in the first place.

That is why I have called the Youth Summit this Thursday. Two hundred experts from the public and community sectors, as well as youth workers and academics, will gather in Melbourne, tasked with making sense of what is occurring, and committing themselves to being part of the solution.

Hearing from young people themselves is of course a critical ingredient and that’s why we have been putting them front and centre in all our thinking. We’ve been listening to what they say — through interviews with offenders and at a special youth forum we held last month — and what they had to say was sometimes hard to hear. Melbourne, the world’s most liveable city, is anything but liveable for some of our young people who told us they felt ‘locked out’ of society.

Some of these young people felt it was easier for them to steal than to get a job. They felt the odds of landing employment diminished even further if they had a criminal record — or perhaps if they were from certain ethnic communities.

They felt there was a lack of help from government services for accessing welfare support, training and education that left them despairing, and drawn to the lure of easy money through criminal pursuits. Family is of course a critical component, but sadly, for some, there is no family support or role models.

The rise of social media has changed young people’s worlds in a way we could not have imagined 10 years ago. Today it is the ultimate connector, bringing together people who feel disconnected from their community and looking for a sense of belonging. There is anger among these young people, because for some of them they feel rejected by the broader community.

We need to start the conversation about what we are seeing, across all sectors, and with the involvement of families and those closest to young people.

It is all too easy to focus on the offending and fail to understand that they are also at enormous risk of being victims themselves. We know reporting of offences against young people — particularly violence and sex crimes — is all too low. We need bold thinking and new ideas for steering wayward youths back onto the right track.

We all have a role — police, government, community, business and the media.

And that’s why this Thursday I will be asking everyone in the room to consider what being ‘locked out’ means for our young people today, and how we can give them the hope to aspire and the opportunity to participate fully in all the best our Victorian community has to offer.

Graham Ashton is Victoria Police Chief Commissioner