Send a few to jail — the others will get the message

African youths walk the streets around Dandenong. Picture: Ian Currie

African crime gangs out of control? The solution is simple. Apply the law to African youth gangs and encourage proper sentencing.

African youths, when faced with harsh punishment — any punishment — will cease breaking the law. It’s a simple application of the old law-and-order position: lock a few of them up now and the rest will cease their criminal behaviour.

These young people are certainly behaving in an unacceptable manner and eventually someone will be killed. The problem they have raised for Victorians is that there is little the government can do about it within the existing framework. The whole criminal justice system is weak and underfunded, and youths — male and female, black and white — are happily exploiting the situation.

A number of African youths have seen this problem and taken advantage of it. They realise that if they stay within the Children’s Court system they will be released and counselled rather than be locked up.

Victoria’s inadequate laws mean there is no deterrence to any underage teenagers committing serious crimes. Maximum penalties are sufficient but are never imposed on children, whatever their colour might be. The African gangs know this and if there is no enforcement of penalties by the law they will not be deterred.

How does the community fight back? Rest assured, existing criminal laws and legislated punishments are adequate (if enforced in the courts) so there is no point in legislative change. Bail laws are adequate to lock them up to protect the community, but neither are these enforced.

The federal government (which deported the father of AFL star Dustin Martin) will not send criminals back to Africa. In any case they will almost all be Australian citizens and Australian citizenship is very rarely revoked, and only in extreme circumstances. They will remain in Australia and we must deal with them as part of our society.

Victoria has a major policing problem. The police force is drifting and lacks leadership. Victorians do not have an active chief commissioner. The incumbent is about to resign and in any case is away from the job on extended leave. A good solution would be for the state government to appoint a new commissioner now — someone who will lead the state by tough police enforcement of the law, particularly in relation to the Africans and all gang crime.

We are now seeing a race-based storm in some of the media, but this is merely filling the vacuum left by the state government and their toothless police force. The black Africans are highly visible. Young whites are committing the same crimes all the time but receive little media attention.

White societies such as ours are quick to seize on visible crime by blacks. That was the situation I saw in Alice Springs in the early 1970s when I worked there as a lawyer for the Aboriginal people. They were black and on the streets because they had no homes. That was seen as a threat to white society. In fact the whites were just as drunk and violent but they were not visible as they had homes. White racism was easy when the targets were poor and visible.

Today in Victoria the African youths are extremely visible. I am 188cm but the young teenagers tower above me and no doubt terrify citizens when committing close-up crimes such as assault and robbery, carjacking and home invasion. Gangs make them a greater threat as marauding young black criminals in respectable white neighbourhoods.

The other day I was in the local chemist shop (over the road from the police station) when a huge African teenager walked in and looked around. He did nothing wrong. Immediately an alarm sounded and a voice across the system informed us all that there was an emergency. The youth ran from the shop.

This is not how I want to live, as a citizen or as a lawyer.

It really does remind me of Alice Springs, where one day the lead item on radio news was: “There was no Aboriginal crime overnight.”

Society pays a lot of money to have a police force. And this issue is also a policing problem. Let the police do their job. Let them crack down hard on the active black African criminals without the police being called racist. The media should expose the lack of effective punishment in the Children’s Court and show how the Africans — and others — have been exploiting this to the hilt (and further).

If that court feels the pressure from the media in particular and society in general then it will take a tougher stand towards all young criminals. African youth gangs are a short-term danger but not a long-term problem. The police and courts must come down hard on them and create a deterrent effect which has, so far, been sadly missing.

Peter Faris QC is a retired criminal lawyer based in Melbourne.