"Increasing incarceration won't reduce crime", NATSILS chair says
The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services (NATSILS) warns that a lack of funding for legal assistance and the dropping of Closing the Gap commitments could spur a significant uptick in the number of children incarcerated.
“State and territory governments around Australia are ignoring the evidence on what prevents crime. That means more and more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are going to be locked up in circumstances that other children wouldn’t be, compounding generations of structural racism and discrimination”, NATSILS chair Karly Warner said.
She criticised what she described as a “tragic shift back to failed, punitive policies”.
“Law and order posturing about punishment, power and control has never worked before and it won’t work now. The responsibility of governments is to do everything possible to prevent crime, not to look tough in response”, Warner said. “Putting 10-year-old children in jail and increasing incarceration won’t reduce crime”.
She pointed out that jailing young children would only perpetuate “cycles of trauma, violence and government neglect”; thus, more support for the youth, families and communities was needed. However, funding for legal assistance remains inadequate to support the communities that needed it.
“Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services around the country are currently only able to support a fraction of the people who need our help, including victim-survivors of domestic, family and sexual violence”, Warner explained. “We are appealing to the federal government to fund our services properly to ensure children are not locked up when others wouldn’t be”.
