When police tried to brief Department of Justice officials earlier this year, there were complaints it was too explicit and had racist overtones. Some claimed they were so shocked they dropped their gluten-free muffins into their soy lattes. Reality, it would appear, interferes with the digestive system.
But the hard reality is that we have a new group of a few hundred young, violent, serial offenders. The cycle is predictable – violent home invasion, high-speed chase, arrest, then bail. Rinse and repeat.
Imagine a 14-year-old arrested for the first time after being encouraged by older offenders to commit a house raid. Handcuffed and terrified, he is taken to a police station to be interviewed. By morning, he is freed on bail and returns to his mates as a hero. Why wouldn’t he do it again?
And why wouldn’t others join in?
These are, in many ways, crimes of envy. The have-nots attacking the haves. We have young people who feel they cannot aspire to a better life and want to take the trinkets of success.
I was brought up in a Housing Commission house and our school only went to year 11. Yet, our group didn’t see ourselves as disadvantaged. We went on to become doctors, lawyers, construction bosses and academics. Are those pathways as open today?
Punishment is most efficient if delivered immediately and general deterrence works when others see it being meted out.
The first way to fix a problem is to acknowledge it exists.
When a sergeant walked into a police interview room to question a young offender, the kid was sitting there with his feet on the table. He quickly learnt he had picked the wrong sergeant.
Catching these young criminals is easy. Police have Operation Trinity, where multiple police vehicles prowl the eastern suburbs backed by the police helicopter to grab youth gangs coming in from the outer suburbs. When there is a report of an aggravated burglary, they are there in minutes.
The gangs have changed tactics – hitting houses close to freeway exit points, trying to drive as fast as possible, hoping police will have to abort pursuits because they are too dangerous and using countermeasures to avoid stop sticks.
They are either sharing information or being mentored by older crooks.
Operation Trinity targets youth crime.
The model of keeping young offenders out of prison no longer works. It is actually encouraging them to commit more crime. When they finally end up at court for multiple offences, they get a long sentence rather than a short, sharp reality check. A long sentence means they will be more likely to reoffend on release.
Here we take the easy way out. Magistrates are weak to grant bail (even Carbines had a dip at them last week), but our courts are clogged, and that is often the reason for granting release.
If an offender is likely to be sentenced to three months’ jail, how can they be kept in custody for two years waiting for their trial?
Until we deal with the court delays, everything else is white noise.
These cases are usually pretty simple. The offenders are caught in stolen cars, on CCTV, or at the scene. There is no possible justification for these cases to take so long.
We need to triage these cases in the way medical staff deal with patients in emergency hospital wards.
Maybe the experts could look at a couple of these suggestions:
- Magistrates who remand young offenders in custody alleged to have committed multiple crimes mark their cases as red files.
- A dedicated magistrate and children’s court for red files that must be dealt within three months.
- Special police/prosecution unit to process briefs of young serial offenders.
- Lawyers who work for Legal Aid for two years have their HECS fees waived.
- Offenders under 21 sentenced to four weeks or fewer are given the alternative of working one day a week in a graffiti clean-up unit.
- Businesses who employ former youth offenders have half those wages paid by the government.
- A government boarding school for troubled kids that can’t be controlled by parents and teachers is established. Kids are sent there for one term in a bid to break the cycle.
But before all that, the government should be brave enough to drop the spin. The first way to fix a problem is to acknowledge it exists.
John Silvester lifts the lid on Australia’s criminal underworld. Subscribers can sign up to receive his Naked City newsletter every Thursday.