Tougher penalties dominate the politics of youth crime, but without addressing how young people – particularly First Nations children – learn, relate and develop, punishment risks deepening the very problems it seeks to solve.

Each time youth crime surges into the headlines, governments promise tougher penalties to “teach them a lesson.” Yet for many of the children caught in this system, particularly First Nations young people, the lesson is not learning, but dislocation. Journalist Kat Wong’s recent report on the surging detention of First Nations children should be read as more than another news item. It is a warning about the direction of Australian politics.

Across Australia, First Nations children remain grotesquely over-represented in detention. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports that First Nations young people are detained at vastly higher rates than their peers, and make up the majority of those in custody on any given night.

This is not evidence of a system working. It is evidence of a society repeatedly failing to understand.

The political appeal of harsher sentencing is obvious. It is simple, dramatic, and communicates force and moral certainty.

But force is not the same as effectiveness. Moral certainty is often little more than emotional relief dressed up as policy.

The problem begins with how these children are imagined. The punitive argument assumes a child has entered a shared moral world, understood its rules, weighed consequences, and then chosen to reject them. In many cases, that assumption is absurd.

Many of these young people have learned to........

© Pearls and Irritations