Focus on families triggers a crash in Coolgardie crime rates

Crime in Coolgardie fell by 30pc after police and child protection authorities worked closely with three troubled families.

WA Premier Mark McGowan. Picture: AAP

Crime in the town of Coolgardie fell by 30 per cent after police and child protection authorities worked closely with three troubled families in an ­experiment that is now being rolled out across Western Australia.

The McGowan Labor government will spend $20.4m to ­intensively monitor 120 children at risk of becoming repeat ­offenders. On Monday, Premier Mark McGowan announced the program, Target 120, would be expanded from the city of ­Kalgoorlie-Boulder 600km east of Perth to Kununurra in the far north Kimberley and to the northern Perth suburb of Mirrabooka. Most of the children in the program are indigenous.

The program aims to alter the trajectory of vulnerable children, from family dysfunction and truancy to juvenile detention then adult prison, but a pilot found there were also benefits for the public and the public purse.

In the pilot, badged as an early intervention program, child protection authorities, police and schools focused on three interconnected families in Coolgardie, 30km west of Kalgoorlie, where a total of 16 children were moving between households and getting into trouble.

Subsequently, the crime rate in Coolgardie during the summer of 2018-19 was 30 per cent lower than in 2017-18.

In the pilot program, which also operated in Kalgoorlie-Boulder, case workers built a rapport with the adults in each house and police worked with the local council on a points system that allowed children who had been banned from the pool to earn their way back in.

In one example, a group of young cousins was often in strife but not when they spent time with their grandmother, who enjoyed looking after them but was stretched as a full-time carer for one of her adult children with a disability. After asking the grandmother what she would like to do, case workers helped her find independent living for her adult child. She was then able to devote her time to raising her grandchildren.

In the new Target 120 program, children are chosen using data about the factors that contribute to a child becoming a prolific criminal. A Productivity Commission report last year found 54.8 per cent of 10 to 16-year-olds who went to juvenile detention in WA were back there within 12 months. The ­national average was 47.2 per cent.

In Kalgoorlie-Boulder, where Target 120 has begun working with 30 children in the goldmining city with a population of 30,000, police believe 60 per cent of juvenile crime is committed by just 10 kids. The children in the program get mentoring, and activities such as football or basketball are offered as rewards for going to school.

WA Child Protection Minister Simone McGurk said the program looked at young people as individuals — not as a group — to steer them away from a life of crime.

“It also provides guidance in life skills, health and family wellbeing,” she said.

“Young people are still developing and learning, so this ­expansion aims to help more children to become valued members of their communities.”