Teenage burglar sentenced in the absence of his mother has appeal bid rejected

‘You have reached a point in your life at the age of 16 that you are unemployable and that your prospects in the future are only receipt of some form of government benefit.’

Judge Greg Borchers said up to 80 per cent of youths on good behaviour bonds went on to immediately reoffend.

THE Supreme Court has rejected the bulk of an appeal against the jailing of a teenage burglar who committed a string of break-ins in breach of a good behaviour bond in Alice Springs.

Youth Court judge Greg Borchers sentenced the 15-year-old to two months and 14 days in jail — suspended after five days — after the boy broke into a local business just 10 days after appearing in court for an earlier burglary in 2018.

In sentencing, Mr Borchers said the boy had refused to obey his mother and grandmother or go to school and as a result was “totally uneducated”.

“You cannot read or write and your chances of getting a job are negligible,” he said.

“I am not sure whether you have been encouraged by your family not to value school but you have reached a point in your life at the age of 16 that you are unemployable and that your prospects in the future are only receipt of some form of government benefit.”

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Mr Borchers described good behaviour bonds as “ineffectual”, saying between 70 and 80 per cent of youths handed one by a court went on to immediately reoffend.

“Asking a young person who is not subject to any regulation in their own domestic life to obey the law is a farce and it proves so and the statistics prove so,” he said.

“It is important in my view, regardless that this is a youth court, that the authority of this court be imposed upon those that believe it is nothing more than a joke.”

Lawyers for the boy appealed the ruling on the grounds that Mr Borchers failed to properly apply the principles of the Youth Justice Act, including by proceeding to sentence in the absence of his mother.

But in a decision handed down in the Supreme Court last week, Chief Justice Michael Grant ruled Mr Borchers was within his rights to conduct the hearing without the boy’s mother present as the law “cast an obligation on the responsible adult in respect of the youth to attend court”.

“The presence of the responsible adult in the process aims to encourage appropriate supervision, care, guidance and support after the imposition of sentence in order to maximise the youth’s chances of rehabilitation and development of a sense of social responsibility,” he said.

“However, what is also plain from the language of the statute is that the presence of a responsible adult is not a precondition to the exercise of the court’s powers in relation to conviction, sentence or any other form of order or adjudication.

“While there might conceivably be particular circumstances in which proceeding in the absence of the responsible adult is so unreasonable, arbitrary or antithetical to the statutory objects as to constitute error in law, this is not such a case.”

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Chief Justice Grant quashed the boy’s convictions on concession by the Crown and struck out his 14-day sentence for breach of bail as “manifestly excessive”.

“It is unlikely that the appellant readily understood the seriousness of remaining in Alice Springs with friends and relatives notwithstanding the condition imposed by the court or that it was morally wrong to do so,” he said.