Authorities grapple with juvenile detention solutions
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On average there are about 1,000 young offenders held in detention across Australia on any given day. (file photo)
Australian criminologists are at odds over what to do with young criminals who are repeat offenders.
On average there are about 1,000 young offenders held in detention across Australia on any given day, but the financial costs of juvenile detention are far from negligible.
In New South Wales alone, almost half of the budget for the Department of Juvenile Justice is spent keeping young criminals locked up.
But new research compiled by the Australian Institute of Criminology has found the teenagers given custodial orders are no less likely to reoffend than others who are given non-custodial orders.
One of the authors of the study was Dr Andrew McGrath from Charles Sturt University.
"In other words, offenders with the same amount of prior offences, there was no difference in their likelihood of reconviction, regardless of whether they'd been in detention or not," he said.
"The real deterrent seems to be how likely it is you think that you'll get locked up. The actual punishment you get doesn't seem to play such a big role."
It raises the question of why, if the costs are so high, and the benefit so small, young offenders are locked up at all.
"Given that it doesn't seem to stop them reoffending when they get out, the question is whether that money could be put into more worthwhile intervention programs," Dr McGrath said.
"Multi-system therapy is one I think which is being trialled and it's been found to be very effective overseas."
"[That] involves focussing on a number of problems within the young offender's life, including their family, their schooling, their work prospects, the type of kids they're hanging out with as well. So it's looking at all these problems and trying to address them.
A reason often cited for custodial orders is to protect the community.
But Dr McGrath says incapacitating young offenders on these grounds, means making a judgement about whether they are likely to reoffend.
"Certainly one consistent finding in the criminological literature is there are a small proportion of offenders who commit a large proportion of total crimes," he said.
"In theory if we can incapacitate those, that would result in a reduction in crime. The problem is, as I said, identifying those offenders with a good degree of certainty ... it's not impossible but our risk assessment procedures are a little imprecise."
'Breeding criminals'
Michael Benes is a criminologist based at RMIT University and an expert in juvenile justice.
"I would never say a young person is irrevocable, that is, beyond help, particularly a young person," he said.
"I mean they're evolving, they're still growing up.
"If we incarcerate them - and there are some suggestions to even incarcerate them for a longer period of time - you will really breed a criminal class for the future.
"I think that there are some people that need to be incarcerated for very, very long periods of time, some of them perhaps forever... but for young people I would avoid it at all costs."
Some have cast doubt on whether diversion programs can work for persistent serial offenders, especially in remote and regional communities with entrenched poverty and social problems.
But Mr Benes says programs are transferable to larger states with remote populations.
"They need to be adjusted to the local circumstances," he said.
"I mean you can't just take one program in total and just transfer it somewhere else hoping it will work, because there might be some and sometimes significant differences. But the principles of the program would work.
"What we are doing by incarcerating people, and incarcerating young people, it's after the horse has bolted.
"You need to work with them before they get into the offending behaviour and once they are in the offending behaviour, try to work with them so that you actually get them out.
"There's a plethora of research to suggest that many of them will in fact grow out of it."
