Pilot program offering alternative to locking up young offenders

Criminologist Shannon Dodd will this week launch a $73,000 pilot program funded by the Queensland government targeting the mainly indigenous teens driving car-related crime in Townsville.

Criminologist Shannon Dodd is launching a pilot program targeting youths involved in car crime in Townsville. Picture: Glenn Hunt/The Australian

Criminologist Shannon Dodd is all too aware of what the critics and cynics are saying about her bid to engage juvenile offenders in her former home town of Townsville.

“They’re calling us clowns on social media and that’s one of the nicer things being said,” she sighed. “It’s fairly predictable when you’re dealing with a topic like this.”

On Wednesday, she will launch a $73,000 pilot program funded by the Queensland government targeting the mainly indigenous teens driving car-related crime in the northern city, one of a number of hotspots nationally.

The aim is two-fold. First, to educate the kids about the consequences of their actions – for themselves, their victims and those put at risk by car theft and joy-riding. At the very least, Dr Dodd hopes to get them to think twice before reoffending.

More broadly, she wants to lay down research markers to detail and eventually understand who they are and why they act out so nihilistically when the surest thing about stealing a car – or breaking into a home for the keys – is being caught.

“We’re not trying to make excuses for what they do,” Dr Dodd said. “I agree that community safety has to come first. But if you truly care about community safety you’ve also got to realise that the current responses are not working.

“Locking kids up does not work. In fact, all it does is compound the financial hurt to taxpayers and entrench the kids concerned in the juvenile justice system. So instead of throwing the book at them, I thought, ‘why don’t we try something else?’”

The inaugural six-week course she will run in Townsville, where she grew up, involves some novel interactions for the Indigenous teens aged 13-17. A police officer who deals with youth crime will spend time with them, along with a specialist Indigenous psychologist from Sydney and an emergency doctor at the local hospital. They will hear first-hand from a crime victim what it means to lose your car when driving is the only way to get to work or Nan to the doctor.

If that doesn’t cut through, Dr Dodd is hoping former NRL star Ray Thompson will: When a Cowboy speaks in rugby league-mad Townsville, people pay attention.

Former Cowboys player and Indigenous All Stars representative Ray Thompson.

The kids will do work experience with a panel beater to demonstrate the damage joy-riding can do and – who knows – introduce them to a trade that is crying out for workers. A session on a golf driving range is actually a lesson in the physics of dangerous high-speed driving.

“I’m trying not to have expectations,” said Dr Dodd, 37, a lecturer at the Australian Catholic University in Brisbane. “I think we’ve put together a really good line-up of speakers and activities so hopefully it will provide enough that if a situation arises in the future for these kids where, you know, a friend says, ‘let’s go nick a car,’ some part of our program will resonate. But I’m realistic. It’s a hard group we are dealing with. If nothing else, I hope that these young people leave knowing that there are adults who care about them.”

The only applicable research she’s been able to pull up is a 20-year-old paper on the “culture of joy-riding” in Townsville among Indigenous youth, published when she was a schoolgirl there.