A plan by the Victorian government to curb an unprecedented wave of violent youth crime by fitting repeat offenders with GPS-tracking bracelets has been shown not to work when used in other parts of Australia and overseas.
The United Kingdom, the United States and New Zealand have all turned to ankle bracelets as an alternative to youth detention, but evidence from a small number of studies shows the devices have failed to curb recidivism and can instead lead to increased incarceration.
The ankle bracelets would be fitted to 50 underage offenders as part of the trial.
Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes announced last month that Victoria would trial the use of GPS-tracking bracelets on 50 young offenders as part of a range of youth justice reforms that will also include raising the age of criminal responsibility.
The Allan government is under increased pressure to take a tougher stance on underage offending after a spate of aggravated burglaries, car thefts, assaults and robberies propelled youth crime rates to a 10-year high last year. Crime Statistics Agency figures released last month showed children aged 14 to 17 were responsible for 18,729 criminal incidents last year – that age group’s highest rate of offending since 2009, according to Victoria Police.
Just last week, police arrested and charged six teenagers over two separate violent crime sprees across Melbourne’s suburbs. Those arrested included a 15-year-old boy from Melbourne’s south-east accused of participating in eight burglaries and armed robberies over two days. Five teenagers were arrested after allegedly being armed with machetes and attacking several shops in Melbourne’s east before engaging in a high-speed police chase through the suburbs.
Queensland has been trialling a similar monitoring scheme to rein in youth violence in parts of the state since 2021, but a police document tabled before a youth justice reform committee last year showed the program has failed to prevent recidivism.
According to the briefing paper, only a small number of underage offenders were ordered to wear the device by the court and, of those, one-third continued to engage in criminal behaviour, including serious offending.
Dr Marietta Martinovic, an associate professor of criminology at RMIT University, said the reason young offenders weren’t deterred by the monitoring devices came down to neuroscience.
“Adolescent brains are not developed until the early 20s, so they have less ability to understand the consequences of their decisions,” she said. “They most likely will be incarcerated because they will not be able to comply with the strict curfew conditions.”
Research from George Washington Law School in the US backs Martinovic’s assessment. A paper on the monitoring of youth offenders published in 2017 found children who had never been detained were cycling in and out of juvenile detention as a result of technical violations of bail.
“Ultimately, the problem with electronic monitoring may be that any juvenile court-based approach to ‘alternative programs’ risks creating more harm than good,” the paper concluded.
As of last month, breaching bail conditions and committing further offences while on bail are no longer offences in Victoria. However, people can still be charged over crimes committed on bail and have their bail revoked by a court.
Martinovic, who has devoted most of her career to researching the use of electronic monitoring devices, said the way to tackle the surge in youth crime was to invest resources in early intervention and diversion programs instead of focusing on “short-term wins and penal populism”.
“We’ve got to be guided by what is empirically the right thing to do. I know that’s hard for politicians who are elected every few years, but that really has to be the gold standard,” she said.
Cabinet reached consensus on the ankle monitor plan last month because it responded to community concerns about young re-offenders without winding back previous commitments on raising the age of criminal responsibility, according to two sources with knowledge of the deliberations who were not authorised to speak publicly.
The state government announced it would introduce a bill to fit youth offenders on parole with ankle bracelets in 2018, but the legislation failed to pass parliament before the state election and was quietly dumped after Labor was re-elected.
Acting Attorney-General Enver Erdogan said the measures sent a clear message that criminal behaviour would not be tolerated in Victoria and bail compliance should be taken “extremely seriously”.
“If a person continues to abuse their bail [conditions] or commit further crime, it is our expectation that their bail is revoked,” he said. “This trial will be an extra tool to ensure that bail conditions are followed and help young people take the opportunity of bail as a chance to turn their lives around.”
Acting Attorney-General Enver ErdoganCredit: Facebook
Victoria doesn’t have a state-run electronic monitoring scheme for people who are on bail. However, Corrections Victoria oversees a program that monitors some adult offenders released on parole, community correction orders or post-sentence supervision orders through GPS-tracking devices.
Cashed-up accused criminals can also offer to pay $25,000 a year to private companies to be fitted with the device to boost their chances of being granted bail. But the scheme is viewed with suspicion by some magistrates and judges who see the devices as technologically unreliable and an impost on police.
“I would be reluctant to support such a condition where the supplier of the device was a private company that regarded an accused person as their client,” then Supreme Court judge Lex Lasry said during a bail application in 2020.
Details about the youth trial are scant and are likely to remain so until the bill is introduced to parliament later this year. However, the scheme will probably mirror the existing state-run adult parole system, rather than the privatised bail model, and include more intensive bail supervision and pathways into education and employment programs.
Ankle bracelets began circulating as an alternative to overcrowding in US prisons in the 1980s. The devices were conceived by American judge Jack Love, who was inspired while reading a Spider-Man comic strip in a newspaper. In the 1977 strip, a villain straps an “electronic radar device” capable of tracking someone’s geolocation in real time to the superhero’s arm.
Matinovic estimates there are 400 adults subject to electronic monitoring in Victoria, but the exact figure is not publicly available. The Department of Justice and Community Safety did not respond to questions about the total number of offenders.
Ankle bracelets collect location data points which they transmit to a centralised system in intervals. They rely on mobile networks and cannot send tracking locations if they lose reception. Their anti-tampering systems have also failed to deter offenders from escaping.
Alleged Sydney drug lord Mostafa Baluch made headlines in 2021 when he allegedly cut off his ankle monitor and tried to flee NSW in the back of a truck bound for Queensland after being released on bail. A NSW court later heard the private company monitoring Baluch had called him and his parents before alerting the police.
Mostafa Baluch allegedly cut off his ankle bracelet and attempted to flee NSW.Credit: Brook Mitchell
Accused drug smuggler Xu Lin also allegedly removed his ankle monitor in 2018 while on bail after being charged over his alleged role in the importation of 159 kilograms of methamphetamine and 340 kilograms of ephedrine hidden in bar stools and soup mix. He has remained at large since.
In a statement, the Department of Justice and Community Safety said the trial would give authorities “an additional option when setting bail conditions”.
With Erin Pearson
John Silvester lifts the lid on Australia’s criminal underworld. Subscribers can sign up to receive his Naked City newsletter every Thursday.