Youth Justice Act amendments for breach of bail are working to keep kids out of the justice system, says top NAAJA lawyer
THE amendments to the Youth Justice Act for breach of bail are working to keep kids out of the justice system, says NAAJA’s top lawyer
Northern Territory
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THE amendments to the Youth Justice Act for breach of bail are working to keep kids out of the justice system, says North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency principal legal officer David Woodroffe.
Mr Woodroffe’s comments come after an NT News story yesterday in which NT Police Association president Paul McCue said the changes to breach of bail for yout h had created extra work for police on the ground.
“Those recent amendments that came through this year aren’t helping police in any way and it needs to be reviewed,” Mr McCue said.
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Mr Woodroffe said the changes to breach of bail, which came into effect on March 2020, were to reduce the disproportionate number of Indigenous youths charged with the offence.
“Prior to the March 2020 changes to breach of bail, the law disproportionately impacted on Aboriginal children who were charged with breach of bail at a rate 13 times greater than non-Aboriginal children,” Mr Woodroffe said.
“Youth crime is a complex problem and simplistic answers of more ‘handcuffs’ and locking up more and more children in youth detention centres are not solutions. Government and police must stay the course in its reforms of continuing with successful youth justice conferencing and police diversion programs.”
He said bringing back punitive approaches would be detrimental to the work being done to reduce the number of Aboriginal youths from entering the justice system.
“A push to re-criminalise breach of bail and punitive approaches to youth is a false dawn to address the problems of youth crime.
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“As a law, it did not work as it failed to address the needs of individual children’s mental health, disability, trauma and lack of safe environments that were direct causes of failure to comply with bail,” Mr Woodroffe said.
Changes to the Youth Justice Act were recommended after the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the NT.
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