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Since the Intervention, crime has gradually increased in Alice Springs, with a dip in 2020 because of pandemic lockdowns and a sharp rise since the lockdowns. Many call it a “youth crime crisis”. We don’t know, and cannot know, whether the Intervention caused the spike in crime; however, it is widely known that the Intervention caused more food insecurity and less self-determination and, therefore, increased feelings of disempowerment to those who were the subjects of the intervention: disadvantaged people in remote communities.
In the daytime and at night, between 100 and 150 children and young adults, male and female, roam around Alice Springs in groups. They often harass and intimidate passers-by; throw rocks; steal from shops, cars, businesses, and houses; steal cars and (dirt) bikes and go joyriding; ram-raid buildings; break the windows of cars; break into businesses and homes; and vandalise public spaces and businesses. Sometimes they are involved in severe assaults, often of vulnerable inhabitants such as the elderly and the disabled.
Some of the children committing these crimes are as young as seven. Some are equipped with weapons; some with tools for breaking and entering. They display gang-like behaviour, such as organising people to stand watch while others check doors and windows.
This puts them at significant risk of becoming subject to the laws of complicity combined with mandatory sentencing. This is an extremely troubled field of law with very bad outcomes
for offenders, especially if the crime is serious, as will be explained later with reference to the Zach Grieve case. They differ from other gangs in that they already had a relationship before they formed the gang: they are either family, or are from the same town camp or remote
community, or both.
All offenders identify as Aboriginal. Most are highly transient and move around between remote communities and houses in Alice Springs. For most, the street is the safest option. For many, the street is the only option. Most suffer from the impact of severe cultural trauma and
severe adverse childhood experiences.
To tackle this public-health problem with privately funded guards accompanied by dogs or by cruel incarceration, Northern Territory-style, seems absurd. However, expecting the offenders to attend programs at NGOs is also absurd. Their lives are in too much chaos to regularly attend programs.
The criminal justice and law enforcement systems in the Northern Territory cause extremely high reoffending figures and an immeasurable amount of suffering and trauma to all involved: victims, offenders, witnesses, police officers, lawyers, judges, magistrates, prison workers and the families of all these people. We are truly united in trauma through the crime problem in Alice Springs.
Since the end of the cashless debit card and the alcohol restrictions in remote communities in July 2022, an older cohort of troublemakers are regularly seen on our streets again too, often after having consumed copious amounts of alcohol or, if no money for alcohol was around,
hand sanitiser, with all the problematic behaviours that come with it. A video of a seriously intoxicated naked man who jumped on the roof of a taxi, kicked in the windscreen with his bare feet and then rode the top of the cab while fondling his genitals went viral in September 2022. The incident occurred in broad daylight in one of the most people-dense areas of the town, where parents were walking with their children. After the incident, Senator Jacinta Price and Labour member for Lingiari Marion Scrymgour, called for bringing back the ban on
alcohol in remote communities.
Young offenders eventually come before the court and are processed through a justice system which is meant to help heal the community from the wounds of crime and
to teach the offenders to change their ways. Alas, instead it exacerbates the wounds. Offenders come out at the other end reoffending; victims feel unheard and abandoned;
and lawyers, police and prison workers are frustrated, to say the least.
Victims of crime are calling for a variety of actions. A Facebook page named Action for Alice 2020 give them a voice. The usual “tougher measures”, “hold the parents responsible”, “a curfew”, “more CCTV cameras” frequently come up as solutions in this forum. These measures have proven to be challenging to implement or not to work at all to reduce crime and reoffending. Nevertheless, some people want “to give them a go.” The question is whether giving something “a go” without first analysing the problem to its core has a high enough success rate. It seems instead a hit-and-miss approach that is doomed to disappoint and cost millions. The problem is seldom thought through from its very roots until the end.
Both the right and the left need to respond more thoughtfully to this problem. I attempted to think the problem through from its roots. This blog is the result. It began as a PhD thesis, but meaningful research for it was systematically blocked by the ethics committee. I will tell
the reader more about this in the chapter about identity politics, tokenism, and the infantilisation of Aboriginal people, which is one of the 31 hurdles this book describes
that we must overcome to solve the problem of youth crime in our town.
This blog proposes a bipartisan solution: one that is based on science and was developed by talking informally with many people in the community.
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