Victoria’s youth justice plan has drawn unanimous condemnation across the legal profession. For this feature, Lawyers Weekly speaks with experts about why the reforms are destined to fall short and the alternatives that should have been supported instead.
Under Jacinta Allan’s proposed “adult time for violent crime” legislation – introduced in Parliament on Tuesday (2 December) – children as young as 14 could be sentenced to a life behind bars for crimes such as aggravated home invasion, carjacking, and robbery.
The legislation was immediately met with outrage from key legal bodies like the Victorian Bar, Criminal Bar Association (CBA), and the Australian Lawyers Alliance (ALA), each of which expressed deep concern that it would only intensify the cycle of offending.
These legal bodies stressed that, rather than support punitive measures, evidence has shown that children who are kept in custodial environments for longer are far more likely to be transformed into hardened criminals who will go on to commit further offences.
“All of the research, and it is all, shows that jailing children, and particularly for lengthy periods, increases recidivism. In fact, more than eight out of 10 children who spend time in custody reoffend within two years,” ALA criminal justice spokesperson Greg Barns SC said in the days after the proposed legislation was announced.
Allan’s proposed legislation also drew the ire of legal experts because it lacked consultation with the profession. In a joint statement, the Victorian Bar and CBA said they were “disappointed” to have not been contacted about such an “important and complex policy area”.
“Evidence-based policy development is critical to both securing the best outcomes for the community and ensuring that our system and administration of criminal justice maintains community confidence.
“Community confidence will best be maintained by a careful process of reform that involves consultation with those who understand the operation of the system and understand how it might be improved, and consideration of the evidence which assists in understanding how best to address problems with the system,” chair of the CBA’s executive committee, Christopher Carr SC, told Lawyers Weekly.
Lawyers Weekly spoke to several experts about the legislation and what they would have proposed to Allan instead.
What this legislation will mean for children
Under the current legislation, the maximum custodial sentence that can be imposed in the Children’s Court is three years. With the proposed reforms, children aged 14 and above face a maximum jail term of between 15 and 25 years, depending on the offence.
It is important to note that there already exist mechanisms in the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005 for the uplift of certain serious offences to adult courts in recognition of the gravity of offences. In light of this, Carr said the proposed laws are a “huge departure” from the existing youth justice sentencing principles.
Carr explained that the legislation would also include a clause that would require a child who is dealt with for one of the designated offences to be tried in an adult court for other offences on the same indictment.
“A child might end up with a series of separate trials in an adult court for, perhaps in some instances, relatively minor offences, and at immense cost to the community, because we know that running trials in the County Court does cost the community a fortune,” Carr said.
The CBA acknowledged there was a “serious problem” with youth justice in Victoria, but evidence-based consideration was needed to ensure the community is kept safe and young people are dealt with appropriately, “given their individual circumstances”.
Research does not support punitive measures
Research from the Australian Institute for Health and Welfare showed that 70 per cent of young people returned to detention within six months, and 84 per cent within 12 months. Barns said this demonstrated that threats of jail time did not work as a deterrent.
Associate Professor Nadine Connell from Griffith University’s school of criminology and criminal justice told Lawyers Weekly there “is no evidence in the history of juvenile justice prevention and intervention that more punitive punishments are helpful”.
“Countries have the death penalty and still have homicide, so the belief that there is a coaction between the act and the punishment has been seen, over and over again, to be one that does not work for the vast majority of individuals who commit particularly serious crimes.
“If we know it is not working for adults, why in the world would we think it’s going to work for young people who are still sorting out their processing, their understanding of consequences, their long-term thinking?” Connell said.
The Victorian Bar and CBA said that from their experience in dealing with children and young people in the justice system, they are “rarely, if ever,” considering the likely consequences if they are caught. The notion that they will with the new legislation is “not consistent with any evidence or research about how children’s brain function”.
Nerita Waight, CEO of the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service (VALS) and an elected member of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria, said none of the legislative reforms were founded in evidence, community safety or fundamental human rights.
“This is not about kids being held accountable for their actions, this is about locking away a cohort of young people who they have determined to be ‘the problem’, who the government have lost hope for in terms of rehabilitation,” Waight told Lawyers Weekly.
According to police statistics released in September, young offenders were “over-represented” in serious and violent crimes in the 12 months to June 2025. For example, almost half of all aggravated burglaries were perpetrated by children aged under 17.
However, Connell said it was important to consider that any supposed statistics largely depend on “how you cut the data, how you consider per capita changes, and consider changes in enforcement over the last 10 years … it is not as cut and dry as to say there has been an increase in youth crime”.
What is known for sure is that it is not that more young people are committing crimes, but rather a cohort of young people is committing more crimes, Connell added.
“I also think one of the things we have to remember as Australians is we have a relatively small population with a relatively low crime rate and a national media presence. So when something happens in Melbourne, we hear about it in Brisbane; when something happens in Perth, we hear about it in Sydney. It can increase our belief that things are happening [more frequently],” she said.
Vulnerable children the most at risk
Waight said it was with a “heavy heart” to think of the children who will be caught up in the legislation, including children with a disability, children who have been coercively forced to engage in risk-taking behaviours, those from impoverished backgrounds, and those who have been removed from the care of their loved ones.
The ”disastrous impacts” on Aboriginal people by the recent bail law changes in Victoria also suggested these sentencing reforms “will have a similarly devastating impact and only lead to further entrenched criminalisation”, Waight explained.
“Governments have the reports, they have the evidence, they have the case studies. They have listened to Aboriginal communities’ stories of their experiences with the criminal legal system, they have heard the undeniable evidence of systemic racial discrimination, harm, suffering and trauma directly influenced by these policy decisions.
“Their failure to act and produce real outcomes to make us safer is a national shame,” Waight said.
Connell said children are not showing up in the justice system out of nowhere: “There is often great trauma and all sorts of issues around class and ethnicity and who gets stopped by police and who gets talked to by police.”
One of the shocking parts of the legislation that stood out to Connell was that no one has looked at scandals within some of Australia’s major private schools, where “rich, usually white, boys” are engaging in serious harm.
“I haven’t seen any legislation that seems to care about that, I haven’t seen any legislation that wants to protect women and girls from being harassed or abused, despite the fact that actually, when it comes to national comparisons, Australia is really bad,” she said.
“The cynic in me says you cannot convince me you really care about all young people, you care about a subset of people who are complaining about being victimised by young people, usually who are coming from lower socioeconomic, more vulnerable communities.”
The alternative approaches to youth crime
Legal experts have acknowledged there is reason for the genuine concern from the Victorian public about youth crimes, but there are proven, evidence-based methods to address it that do not come at the cost of the lives of young people and their communities.
Connell stressed that “we haven’t even come close to doing everything that we could possibly do”.
“Your average politician is trying to have proof in one or two or three years so they can get re-elected. While I’m sure they would love to see some long-term gains, most of them are thinking legacy in the short-term, so they don’t care if they’re kicking the can down the line – they care about getting one on the scoreboard now,” she added.
Speaking to the alternative methods, Connell said schools should receive greater investment so they can become safer, stronger and more welcoming places for all Australian children.
Australia should also be addressing the cost-of-living crisis, which could mean parents are more likely to spend time with their children and deter them from “ending up in the wrong places”.
There is also the need for stronger therapeutic supports from the court systems, Connell stressed.
“If the court is dealing with young people, we need to have a place for them to go, a thing for them to do, a high-level therapeutic rehabilitation option that is culturally appropriate, age appropriate, and gender appropriate,” Connell said.
Waight said anyone in the community knows that what helps to break the cycle of offending is “education, mentoring, safe and stable housing, regular food and healing from trauma”. For Aboriginal children, connection to communities and culture is vital.
Rather than looking to fill prisons, Waight said the government should instead invest in “self-determined, trauma-informed, therapeutic intensive services and supports that work with the young people and their family so they can learn from their mistakes, heal and thrive”.
“We’re in a cost-of-living crisis, and instead of looking at where we can put funding to make sure all young people have food on the table, live in safe housing, and aren’t experiencing violence, the government is spending money locking children up,” Waight said.
Having identified “serious gaps” in legal representation for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, VALS established its youth practice, Balit Ngulu. It was designed to be trauma-informed and provide a “holistic, wraparound, culturally safe” support system.
The Balit Ngulu team works with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families to “change their life trajectory, to understand their goals, and support them in their journey”.
“We know for a lot of kids who are in contact with the criminal legal system, the reality is they are most likely dealing with transgenerational trauma, so we need to work in a trauma-informed and therapeutic approach,” Waight said.
Naomi Neilson is a senior journalist with a focus on court reporting for Lawyers Weekly.
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