There’s no denying we are facing a raft of serious problems in the Territory today, with community safety being a legitimate concern. What worries me as I walk around Alice Springs, my home, is the feeling that as a community we are more divided than we were in the 90s when I first moved to here.
This division seems to stop us acknowledging the harm we do to each other, both the crimes committed against people or property in the community, and the harm caused by the punishment and incarceration being imposed in response.
Fear sparked by our experiences as victims of crime or what we read in the media is understandable, we need to address this problem in a number of ways. The justice system has a role to play as do the other systems that address disadvantage and promote community cohesion. We’re all safer when disadvantage is addressed, and that’s best done through early intervention work across education, employment, housing, health and the justice system.
We can do better, by taking a hard look at the problems where they are being felt at their worst and doing the hard work to make our community safer. Much of the policy response from federal and territory governments in my time has come in the form of compliance programs rather than community development approaches. The quintessential difference is that governments of all types saying ‘we can fix this by punishing people’ rather than sitting down with people living in those circumstances and asking ‘how do we fix this together?’
Ahead of the NT election last year, Jesuit Social Services advocated for a humane youth justice system grounded in prevention and early intervention where the rights and unique needs of children are protected, and warned that criminalising children and young people in contact with the justice system and incarcerating them for poverty-driven offences, would not reduce youth crime.
But that route seems to be exactly the path the government has chosen. As they lead us in a direction that criminalises poverty driven offending, there are no signs that the ‘youth crime crisis’ that propelled them to election victory is being solved. Instead, we are seeing police, courts and prisons stretched well beyond their limits. The Northern Territory’s police union recently warned that another death or serious incident in custody is only a matter of time, due to the current overcrowding and conditions.
This hasn’t all popped up since the last election. A decade or more of Territory governments have implemented policy changes often without the services and infrastructure required to make them actually work as designed. It has led to the deterioration of the safety net that protected Territorians facing severe disadvantage. This disadvantage leads to many of the major driving factors of the type of crime we are seeing in the Territory today.
The punitive approach underpinning the CLP’s new youth justice reforms will only take us further from what actually keeps people safe. Putting more children in jail, for longer and in worse
conditions, ignores that disadvantage and does nothing to address those driving factors. No one is better off for this, or safer.
Community-led solutions are out there and they work – Groote Eylandt has seen offending halve in the past year since establishing the Northern Territory’s first Community Court and Community Justice Group, an approach Katherine’s Justice Reinvestment program, supported by Jesuit Social Services, is looking to emulate.
Meanwhile, children are being denied bail and held hundreds of kilometres from home in overcrowded prisons with little access to services or even their lawyers. These children, overwhelmingly Indigenous, are being failed by the systems and institutions responsible for protecting them.
The Office of the Children’s Commissioner Northern Territory reported last October that 94% of children in detention in the NT were known to child protection, finding that “the high number of children returning to youth justice supervision after being sentenced to detention demonstrates that time spent in detention was ineffective…time in custody could be seen as criminogenic in and of itself.”
The CLP’s recent decision to restrict what’s referred to as ‘diversion’ and essentially mandate jail time for children who might otherwise have an opportunity to be supported in the community, is interfering with evidence backed work to stop young people from reoffending.
Restorative justice practices, like our Youth Justice Group Conferencing program, can have an immediate and significant impact on the behaviour and attitudes of young people, helping to reduce reoffending and keeping them away from the prison settings which we know are harmful.
Group conferences are not an easy experience for those involved, least of all the young person. It means coming face to face with the people they harmed, along with their family, police, lawyers, community leaders and others.
While difficult, group conferences are not meant as a punishment, but instead to enable young people to take responsibility for their actions in a way that court and jails do not. They hear first-hand the impact of their actions and the ripples of harm across the community, which has a lasting impact. We also regularly hear from victims that participating in a group conference allowed them to give voice to the harm they experienced and have a say in how it is repaired, helping them find closure and a sense of justice.
Through our nearly 50 years of work with young people who have contact with the justice system, we’ve learnt that this is a more effective way to achieve strong and cohesive communities.
There’s a lot of work needed to repair the Territory, our home, but the first steps are recognising the harm we’re doing to each other and mending the divide in the community. Working together is how we fix this.
John Adams is General Manager, Northern Territory, at Jesuit Social Services.
This piece was originally published in the NT News on August 3, 2025.
