Ahead of the 2025-26 Federal Budget, Jesuit Social Services has published its pre-Budget submission, highlighting opportunities for Government to target spending and policy-making, prioritising reach, strategies and programs that support children, young people and their families to live safe and healthy lives. In our third pre-Budget piece, we focus on the need for a national approach that will not only uphold children’s rights, but drive states and territories to move towards more effective youth justice solutions.
Youth justice systems across Australia continue to raise significant human rights concerns both within the country and internationally. National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds has described the treatment of children in the criminal justice system as ‘one of the most urgent human rights issues facing Australia today’ – and we agree.
Jesuit Social Services has nearly 50 years of experience working with children entangled in the justice system, bearing witness to the deep and lasting harm of punitive approaches. While some children do cause harm to themselves and others in the community, any response must focus on repairing relationships and addressing behaviour in ways that support young people to take responsibility for their actions while addressing the underlying factors behind their behaviour. We call for immediate, substantive reform to ensure that detention is only ever used as a last resort and that all interventions prioritise the wellbeing, rehabilitation, and long-term opportunities of children in the justice system.
Despite international standards advocating for a rehabilitative, child-centred approach to justice, many states and territories continue to incarcerate children as young as 10 years of age. This goes against all available evidence and recommendations from academics, experts and the United Nations, and is also fundamentally ineffective in increasing community safety. Early contact with the justice system significantly increases the likelihood of reoffending, further entrenching young people in cycles of criminalisation rather than holding them to account in an evidence-based way, and supporting them to address the underlying causes of their behaviour.
We also know that repeat offending is concentrated among a small group of young people – over three-quarters of youth crime was being committed by 10 per cent of young offenders. Crucially, children caught up in the youth justice system are among the community’s most marginalised. A significant proportion of children involved in the system have had prior or ongoing involvement with child protection services and have been exposed to domestic and/or family violence. Additionally, Aboriginal children remain significantly overrepresented in youth detention centres, comprising 94 per cent of children aged 10 to 14 in 2022–23 in the NT and 64 per cent in Victoria. These intersecting factors underscore the urgent need for a coordinated national response that moves beyond reactive measures and instead targets the root causes of youth offending with sustained, evidence-based solutions.
Evidence suggests that community-based, rehabilitative responses to youth offending are more effective than punitive approaches. Restorative justice initiatives, such as Youth Justice Group Conferencing which Jesuit Social Services operates in metropolitan Melbourne and across the Northern Territory, have demonstrated positive outcomes in reducing recidivism, strengthening social connections, and improving rates of educational and employment engagement – all critical protective factors against future offending. A 2019 evaluation of the Northern Territory’s Group Conferencing program found that 78 per cent of victims of youth offending were satisfied with the process, while 85 per cent approved of the young person’s plan to prevent further offending. In addition, 83 per cent of participants demonstrated improved engagement with education and employment, and 76 per cent reported stronger social connections. We have the solutions proven to keep the community safe and repair harm while also prioritising child welfare; the challenge lies in our failure to implement them. In Victoria, an evaluation found that young people who successfully completed a conference were up to 40 per cent less likely to re-offend compared with those who experience traditional justice responses.
Jesuit Social Services calls for a national framework that ensures a consistent, evidence-based approach to youth justice across all jurisdictions. The recommendations outlined in the National Children’s Commissioner’s 2024 report, ‘Help way earlier! – transforming child justice,’ provide a roadmap for reform. Key priorities include establishing a National Taskforce and Ministerial Council for Child Wellbeing, expanding Commonwealth funding for evidence-based alternatives like Youth Justice Group Conferencing, setting national standards that uphold children’s rights while enabling local solutions, and ensuring rigorous oversight through monitoring and evaluation.
A system that punishes rather than supports, that incarcerates rather than rehabilitates, cannot deliver just outcomes for children or for the broader community. Australia must move beyond outdated, punitive responses and commit to a justice system that prioritises prevention, intervention, and restoration. The time for national leadership on youth justice reform is now.
