Jeff Kennett calls for young criminals to be sent to farm camps

Former Premier Jeff Kennett has outlined his own tough on crime approach, calling for youth offenders to be shipped off to farm camps.

Former premier Jeff Kennett has called for young offenders to be sent to work camps to curb Victoria’s crime crisis.

With the Opposition yet to outline its own crime policy, Mr Kennett took to social media on Thursday to detail his own tough on crime approach.

“If Victoria is going to get serious about changing the crime culture in Victoria, it needs to put in place a zero tolerance program,” he said.

“For young offenders and what are regarded as minor crimes, (young offenders) should be automatically sentenced to one years detention in a farm like facility where they can be physically employed, and educated.

“Good behaviour over the first 10 months can be rewarded with a reduction of two months in the sentence.

“Bad behaviour can lead to the sentence being extended, or the individual transferred to a youth prison.”

An offender wields a machete in a robbery in Melbourne’s west. Picture: Supplied.

Mr Kennett said the regime would apply to offenders aged 16 years or younger and operate for up to three years.

For more serious crimes, he said young offenders should face minimum two years terms in youth prisons.

Crimes by youths aged 17 years or over would be treated as adult crimes and attract a minimum three-year jail term.

Under his proposal Mr Kennett also called for the courts to be stripped of the power to grant bail in a move that risked assuming guilt on any young person charged with an offence.

“Unless Victoria adopts a zero tolerance to crime, particularly among our youth, many will find ways to get around a different approach,” he said.

“Do the crime, must lead to doing the time.”

Mr Kennett says Victoria needs a zero tolerance approach to crime. Picture: Supplied

The radical policy proposal comes amid growing frustrations within the Victorian Opposition about its failure to articulate its own policy.

Multiple senior Liberals said the Opposition had been poised to unveil its own suite of crime fighting measures last month.

But a decision was made to delay the rollout of the initiatives the Opposition hoped would both heap pressure on the government and impress upon the electorate it was dominating the solution to the crime crisis.

The government subsequently unveiled its own reforms, leaving the Opposition on the backfoot.

Senior Liberals said there was growing frustration about a “go-slow” in unveiling policies, especially in areas like crime, they felt showed it was ready to govern.

Some Liberals said it was humiliating Mr Kennett, who left parliament in 1999, was proposing more policies than the current Opposition.

Originally published as Jeff Kennett calls for young criminals to be sent to farm camps