Holiday Work Analysis

HSC Legal Studies Holiday Work
Analyses

a. ‘Briefing Paper on Juvenile Justice: Some Recent Developments (1999)’

The law treats young people differently to adults as it aims to prevent children from being exploited or from facing the consequences of making uninformed decisions. The criminal justice system recognizes young people can be less responsible than adults for their offences and this is most evident in the way the law approaches the age of criminal responsibility, known as doli incapax. In 1989, the United Nations established a treaty on children’s rights known as the Convention on the Rights of the child (1989). It included an article 41 which encouraged the establishment of ‘a minimum age below which children shall be presumed
This article somewhat criticizes the juvenile justice system as it proclaims the beginning of some long overdue reform in NSW. It claims the Governor, Marie Bashir, will launch a campaign to reduce the staggeringly high rate of young indigenous people in detention centres. Furthermore, it states that in NSW, the young indigenous people make up more than half of the detention population yet just 2.2% of the general population. According to the article, an aboriginal youth facing the court system is 28 times more likely to be placed in juvenile detention than their non-indigenous counterparts. This system is in dire straits and is in need of a new approach involving early intervention, prevention and diversion with incarceration as a last resort that has all become known as ‘justice reinvestment’. In NSW the average annual cost of incarcerating a juvenile is $237,980 an the statistics show that this approach has failed as more than 30% of adult prisoners were first incarcerated as juveniles. Overall, this article criticizes the juvenile justice system as it neglects the statistics and continues on the path of a ‘tough on crime’ system that clearly isn’t working. It aims to initiate reform in the juvenile justice system that would move to focusing on prevention and diversionary programs rather than
A new study by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research suggests that while the conferences are popular with victims and the community, any assumptions that it helps reduce the rate of reoffending was unfounded. About 64% of the 918 young people referred to conferencing and 65% of the 918 dealt with by the Children’s Court were reconvicted of further offences within 24 months. The director of the Bureau says the problem is that these conferences don’t deal with the underlying problems and that the answer lies in well-tested programs known as Family Integrated Transitions, which includes treatment of 4-6 months which teachers adults better parenting and communication skills, and teaches young offenders conflict negotiation skills. Furthermore, the program involves liaising with the child’s school to improve school performance and behaviour as well as encouraging social activities such as sport. This article criticizes youth justice conferencing as it does not show any superior results and further condemns it as it does not actually deal with ay of the underlying problems causing these offences to occur thus lacking effectiveness in regards to the needs of