Locking up young people might make you feel safer but it doesn’t work, now or in the long term
Locking up young people might make you feel safer but it doesn’t work, now or in the long term
In attempts to curb youth crime, the NT government wants to lower the age of criminal responsibility, while the Coalition in Queensland wants to try children as adults for some crimes.
There is a certain point, however, where hopes for rehabilitation are set against too great a cost for public safety when the criminal is violent.
10You've gotta be careful with that. Because once they get out, the way our prison system is designed currently, they're certainly not less likely to be violent than they were going in.
Plus you've gotta be careful about what you even mean by "the criminal is violent". Physically assaulting a person is very different from breaking and entering to steal, which is itself different from ohysically resisting arrest when police use force against an otherwise peaceful protest. But all 3 of these will be called violent by the media, the police, and politicians.
11Is that certain point at age 10? That's what's being proposed here.
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There was some discussion on Q&A about this and related crime topics.
The point was made that if you just start locking people up you probably don't help and may turn them into criminals.
One panellist said that stats show that most of the crime is done by a relatively smaller number of repeat offenders, and locking up everyone else doesn't help.
But I don't think anyone addressed the elephant in the room. What do you do with that smaller number of repeat offenders that are committing the majority of crimes?
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