Violent Juvenile Criminals !

A few days ago the citizens of Melbourne got a taste of what had been brewing in their juvenile justice system.   Fifteen inmates from Malmsbury Youth Justice centre broke free and armed with iron bars stopped traffic on a main road to hijack cars.  Families were bashed if they showed any resistance and other drivers faced extreme danger as the stolen vehicles made high speed escapes pursued by police.  Other escapees broke into homes and generally dispensed mayhem in the community.

Pressure is building to explosion point here in the juvenile justice system in New South Wales.  The prison system is dubbed "the university of crime " and we try and separate young offenders from the old lags by keeping them in separate facilities.  Keeping order is based on incentives.   It is necessary to have a harsher facility to which those attacking officers or other prisoners will serve time, and this needs to be grim to be a deterrent.

In New South Wales we had Cobham serving the general juvenile prison population and Chisholm as the place to send violent offenders needing harsher discipline.  Chisholm has now been closed and there is no way to separate those prone to violence from others who are serving their sentence in a moderate manner.   The incentive for good behaviour no longer exists.

Unfortunately any form of discipline is offensive to the eyes of gentle people.  We were shocked to see pictures of a youth restrained in a Northern Territory juvenile prison and one of the reasons that Chisholm was closed was because of horror at a report that an inmate had been isolated in his cell for 166 days.  In the eyes of many people this is verging on torture.

The good citizens who have never had the experience of visiting a juvenile prison or knowing any of its inmates would not even begin to understand the level of depravity and violence that exists amongst the youth of today.   The custodians who need to work with these inmates are in constant danger of assault and time taken to recover from injuries leads to constant staffing problems.

The system has to deal with a nucleus of hard core troublemakers with strong leadership qualities. They attract followers like iron filings to a magnet and it is necessary to separate them to prevent the formation of gangs.  Many of these are so damaged psychologically by their earlier life that it is inevitable that they will go on to lead a life of violent crime.   The juvenile justice system is the only safeguard preventing them from wreaking havoc on an unsuspecting public.

Whenever a story about a juvenile receiving harsh treatment reaches the public it engenders a high degree of sympathy and a call for remedial action.  The public need to know that part of the custodians struggle is to prevent damage to other detainees who may be drawn into supporting violence and who may be able to return to their families and live a productive life.  Some form of separation and restraint is necessary for that to happen.

The sticking point is - to what degree is discipline acceptable and here opinion is divided to an impossible degree.  Really violent offenders are often kept in their cell for most of the day and there is a need for a number of warders to control them when they are released for exercise.   The purpose of juvenile justice facilities is rehabilitation, but there are some prisoners who are past the point of no return and keeping them is simply the passage of time before they will be released to wreak havoc on society.

That Victorian breakout is a warning to New South Wales of what the future portends unless we can get the balance right in the juvenile justice system.