Locked into place

Photo courtesy Niu Niu on Unsplash

BY ANTHONY CASTLE

I thought about my wrists recently. I had been asleep while travelling and was woken suddenly as the bus I was on came to a stop. Cars were parked alongside. Two figures boarded and walked a teenager from the bus. The vehicles outside were police. A parent began crying behind me, the boy under arrest. I watched him step off and noticed his wrists behind his back. They had put him in handcuffs.

I was travelling interstate to visit a friend last year. The teenager was repeatedly caught vaping during the long journey. After several warnings from the driver, the bus was met by police and the teenager was arrested. I had never seen a boy wearing handcuffs. I put my fingers to my wrist out of instinct, realising how it might feel. It felt vulnerable.

The criminalisation of young people has increasingly been a topic of late. Inquiries have considered the age at which it is appropriate to hold children and young people criminally responsible, to arrest them, to incarcerate them. States and territories have seen ‘law and order’ election campaigns, which promised to target “young offenders” in harsher ways. Australia finds itself again asking the question ‘When does the justice system treat a child who offends like an adult?”

While the minimum age of criminal responsibility differs across the world and across different Australian jurisdictions, the standard set by the United Nations is 14. This is based on the rationale that children under 14 years do not have the cognitive capacity to commit an offence that arises to a criminal level. The minimum age of criminal responsibility is currently 12 in the Australian Capital Territory, but most states and territories retain 10 years of age, with 845 young people aged 10 and over incarcerated last year.

Locking up young people risks future offending, says Mieke Waters.

“Young people who encounter the justice system are, more often than not, those who experience disadvantage,” explains Mieke Waters, Policy and Advocacy Advisor with The Salvation Army. “Locking up children and young people does not free communities from crime, and it does not make communities safer. In fact, our experience and evidence show that locking up young people risks future offending.”

The United Nations states that the incarceration of children increases the risk of crime and disadvantage, particularly for those who are most at risk. The Salvation Army supports a model where the minimum age of criminal responsibility is increased to a minimum of 14 years, without exception. Despite the evidence, children have been targeted in recent elections and ‘tough on crime’ campaigns in Australia, with leaders using slogans such as ‘adult crime, adult time’.

“The current debates and increasingly punishment-oriented legislative amendments are both counterproductive and traumatic for young people,” Mieke says. “When young people are incarcerated, it drives them into further disadvantage. Our frontline services report that young people lose important elements of their life during and post-incarceration, which promote stability, leaving them with no money, no food, no stable accommodation and no supportive adult.”

A shift in governments across Australia is seeing increasingly hardline approaches to young people in the name of community safety, such as reintroducing spit hoods, or removing the use of detention as a last resort. Of the young people incarcerated in Australia, most are male, aged between 14 and 17 and are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. In treating children like criminals, these laws target those most at-risk, subjecting them to greater disadvantage, and increasing the likelihood of offending in adulthood.

I think again about that boy, the handcuffs on his wrists. That part of the joint is sometimes known as the ‘handcuff groove’, the indentation where the steel binders come together. Handcuffs are designed to target this joint, restricting reach and applying pressure to the nerves and bones. The wrist can move in almost any direction, but it is one of the most vulnerable joints in the body. What does it mean to target that vulnerable part of a child’s hands? What does it say about the law if we restrict their reach, if society locks them into place?

“Society often views young people as victims in need of protection, or villains that must be controlled,” says John Marion, Youth Specialist with The Salvation Army. “Which category you fall into often depends on your race and class to a large degree, and we treat them as either dangerous or vulnerable. They are the only class of people who have little choice or control over so many aspects of their lives.”

Growing up and experiencing disadvantage can present a range of risks. With the Government recently passing a social media ban for young people, it seems society is more comfortable with young people in prisons than on Facebook. We remain unsure of whether young people should be protected or punished.

We want to see greater focus on supporting young people and families, says John Marion.

 “People’s views on what to do with young people can be contradictory, but what do Christians believe is the transforming factor for young people?” says John. “We don’t think it’s punishment. We think it’s love. We’re not saying crime is ok, but if you want to see these lives transformed, then we need to offer loving community, not isolate and reject them as punishment.”

The Salvation Army’s Policy and Advocacy Team has engaged in consistent advocacy with governments across Australia to raise the age of criminal responsibility. The Salvation Army recommends implementing prevention, early intervention, and diversionary models to address the drivers of offending, with safeguarding children being a central component.

“We want to see greater focus on supporting young people and families with wraparound and collaborative responses,” says Mieke. “Engage them early and address the root causes of offending, rather than opting for invasive punishment-oriented responses. Diversionary models offer opportunities for flexible responses for those who engage in harmful behaviour from a younger age, whilst upholding the rights, dignity and acknowledging the unique experiences and cognitive capabilities of children and young people.

As United Nations representatives urge state parliaments to abandon ‘adult crime, adult time’ laws, these debates look set to continue, to continue targeting the most at-risk, locking them in place, in our own systems of disadvantage and detention.

The challenge remains not to protect young people as victims or punish them as criminals, but to drop the handcuffs altogether, support and love them as people in their own right.