“Some of these older kids, they really need to be locked up, whether in juvenile detention centres or whatever,” said federal Nationals MP Kevin Hogan on January 14. Hogan’s seat of Page sits on the lands of the Bundjalung and Gumbaynggirr peoples.
Hogan was being interviewed by James Willis on 2GB Breakfast. Willis suggested the “crime problems in the bush” are taking place in Moree, Kempsey and Dubbo.
Premier Chris Minns first talked about the supposed youth crime wave last March.
The Nationals MPs has seized on an early morning incident in the regional town of Casino on January 11 where three teenagers broke into a house, assaulted a 67-year-old woman, stole her car and then led NSW Police on two pursuits.
However, this one crime does not suggest that a full-scale youth crime wave is underway. Indeed, Queensland and Northern Territory have been pointing out that the “youth crimes wave” is not reflected in official statistics, yet they are passing laws relating to a nonexistent youth crime wave.
Hogan told 2GB that he had written to the NSW minister asking for the Youth Offenders Act 1997 (NSW) to be reformed because, he said, kids are getting too many cautions from police, something he puts down to dodgy legislation.
Sue Higginson, Member of the Legislative Council and the NSW Greens justice spokesperson, was quick to dispute Hogan’s assertions. She said Hogan wants laws that were already been passed by Labor in March and she criticised the major parties for pushing the “tough-on-youth-crime” angle as a means of garnering votes.
“If ever you needed another reason to know the current federal member for Page needs to go and is not capable of doing his job, here it is,” Higginson said. “He’s actually now doing lynch mob politics and it’s not just dangerous, it’s stupidly ignorant … He’s calling for laws that already exist here in NSW … and they’re laws that don’t work.
“His law-and-order shrill is what criminologists refer to as a moral panic — it’s dangerous and baseless.”
Higginson said while there has been a spike in break and enters and car thefts, youth crime rate is in decline. The cost of locking up a child is close to $1 million a year and if a fraction of that were to be invested into the child’s welfare in the community, jail time would never be a consideration.
Higginson said locking up children does not deter them from reoffending, as the criminal justice system is likely to set them up for a career in crime. She underscored that young offenders are “people who have been failed by no fault of their own” and that many who end up inside are living with a cognitive impairment or a disability.
“Most countries have worked out locking up kids is not just disgraceful and a breach of international human rights standards, but it doesn’t work.”
She said most countries had raised the age of criminal responsibility but “in NSW, we lock kids up as young as 10 years old.”
Sixty percent of young people behind bars are First Nations young people.
Nationwide moral panic
The new laws were contained with the Bail and Crimes Amendment Bill 2024 were passed on March 12 last year, and were part of a tough-on-youth-crime package.
The bill included two new youth crime reforms: the first, which has a sunset clause after 12 months, provides that youths aged 14 to 17, who commit serious motor theft and break-and-enter crimes while on conditional release for a related crime, will have their bail revoked and they will be sent to remand.
The second was a “posting and boasting” offence which relates to teenagers committing the same motor theft and break and enter crimes and then bragging about them online.
If a young person is found to have done this, they can have 2 years added on to their prison sentence.
Minns said NSW would not raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10. Shortly after, Victorian Labor said it was toughening bail laws and retracting an earlier promise to continue to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 14.
The more recent crackdown on youth crime started in Queensland in early 2023, when it suspended its Human Rights Act 2019 to pass a youth breach of bail offence as part of a broader package of youth crime law reforms.
The Country Liberal Party in the NT and the Liberal Nationals in Queensland have passed new laws to be able to lock up more kids in child prisons. The Crisafulli government in Queensland has also ensured that youth prison terms now to match those of adults.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids are disproportionately bearing the brunt of all these draconian measures.
Higginson observed that the few older people in positions of power “who have no expertise in law, criminology, health or social justice services or sensible economics” are the ones pushing “dangerous law-and-order, moral panic, lynch mob politics just so they can get on radio and get some clicks”.
[Paul Gregoire writes for Sydney Criminal Lawyers where this article was first published.]