Ms LAWRIE - 2002-02-26
Will the minister tell the House about the Labor government’s initiative to constructively address the problem of youth on our streets at night?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, it gave us great pleasure yesterday to announce the establishment of a Youth Night Patrol in Darwin. We are putting $320 000 into this initiative. With all the debate that there has been in recent times about the problem of juveniles on the streets of Darwin late at night, and with some of the fairly ill-considered ideas that have been mooted in the media, it is important to say that to tackle this problem you need quite a rounded out set of initiatives on the part of government and on behalf of the community.
The Night Patrol is the first link in what will be a series of initiatives that we will be applying to this particular problem in our community. We will follow on in later stages with action taken by School Attendance Officers, as announced in our education policies, so that you will see a 24 hour program applied to young people who are in this position.
The hallmark of what we are trying to do is not to cut across what the police are already able to do in terms of enforcement, but to add to the enforcement effort of police the ability to engage these young people and their family or community situations, and start to try to change the dynamics of what is causing them to behave the way they are behaving. In some cases, we realise and recognise that some of these young people are pretty hard bitten and will not be responding to softer treatment, if you want to see it as that, and in those cases the enforcement measures are still there.
The overwhelming evidence from both Australia and overseas is that you need to add these mediated processes to enforcement if you are going to have any impact on juvenile behaviour and juvenile involvement in crime. You cannot do part of that and expect to succeed in it. The evidence is very clear in our community that we are having increasing problems of this type and for a government not to launch into a concerted campaign to turn back these trends would be negligent on our part.
I am very happy that we are making a start through the Office of Crime Prevention as we announced yesterday. You will be seeing - stepwise - other initiatives coming in beside the Youth Night Patrol to give us a very broad campaign to alter the behaviour of this group of people.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, it gave us great pleasure yesterday to announce the establishment of a Youth Night Patrol in Darwin. We are putting $320 000 into this initiative. With all the debate that there has been in recent times about the problem of juveniles on the streets of Darwin late at night, and with some of the fairly ill-considered ideas that have been mooted in the media, it is important to say that to tackle this problem you need quite a rounded out set of initiatives on the part of government and on behalf of the community.
The Night Patrol is the first link in what will be a series of initiatives that we will be applying to this particular problem in our community. We will follow on in later stages with action taken by School Attendance Officers, as announced in our education policies, so that you will see a 24 hour program applied to young people who are in this position.
The hallmark of what we are trying to do is not to cut across what the police are already able to do in terms of enforcement, but to add to the enforcement effort of police the ability to engage these young people and their family or community situations, and start to try to change the dynamics of what is causing them to behave the way they are behaving. In some cases, we realise and recognise that some of these young people are pretty hard bitten and will not be responding to softer treatment, if you want to see it as that, and in those cases the enforcement measures are still there.
The overwhelming evidence from both Australia and overseas is that you need to add these mediated processes to enforcement if you are going to have any impact on juvenile behaviour and juvenile involvement in crime. You cannot do part of that and expect to succeed in it. The evidence is very clear in our community that we are having increasing problems of this type and for a government not to launch into a concerted campaign to turn back these trends would be negligent on our part.
I am very happy that we are making a start through the Office of Crime Prevention as we announced yesterday. You will be seeing - stepwise - other initiatives coming in beside the Youth Night Patrol to give us a very broad campaign to alter the behaviour of this group of people.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016