Victorian government scraps plan for accused teenage criminals to attend school wearing ankle bracelets

The Victorian government has intervened to scrap a controversial plan to place high-risk accused teenage criminals wearing ankle bracelets in school classrooms, as it continues to push a tough-on-crime agenda.

Victorian Education Minister Ben Carroll with Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascuia/NewsWire

The Allan Labor government has intervened to scrap a controversial plan to place high-risk accused teenage criminals wearing ankle bracelets in school classrooms, as it continues to push a tough-on-crime agenda.

As part of a wider trial that will allow Victorian courts to order children charged with serious offences be subject to electronic monitoring as a condition of their bail, the government had been set to assess and potentially place in mainstream public high schools up to 50 children ordered to wear ankle bracelets.

But the government ditched its plan on Tuesday, when Education Minister Ben Carroll declared “the ­bureaucrats got this wrong”.

“It’s not appropriate for kids wearing ankle bracelets to be in mainstream school settings,” Mr Carroll said. “I have asked the ­Department of Education to go back to the drawing board with the Department of Justice and Community Safety.”

Mr Carroll, who conceded he first learnt of his department’s plan when he read about it in the newspaper on Saturday, said children who were ordered to wear an electronic monitoring device needed to be “in education at a flexible learning option”, at TAFE or getting a job.

“They will not be in mainstream schools,” he vowed.

The backflip follows a move by Premier Jacinta Allan last month to strengthen the government’s law and order credentials by ordering a review of state bail laws.

Ms Allan announced the bail review in February, just four days out from the Werribee by-election, in which crime was understood to be a key issue for voters

“It’s just simply unacceptable to me that many Victorians, particularly women and children, aren’t feeling as safe as they should,” the Premier said when she announced the review, which came less than six months after her government changed the state’s bail legislation.

While Labor managed just to cling onto Werribee, voter backlash slashed the party’s primary vote by 16 per cent.

Opposition education spokesperson Jess Wilson said Mr Carroll’s decision was “an overdue backflip on a program that should never got this far”.

The Victorian government’s wider trial of electronic monitoring of children as a condition of bail will go ahead next month.

A Victorian government spokesperson said the Department of Education was working on alternative education settings that were “more appropriate” for high-risk accused offenders.