According to the institute, $93 million will go towards programs and services focused on addressing the root causes of crime, with $28.8 million allocated to reducing youth offending, and a further $15 million to follow in the next year.

A fast track remand program will also begin in Victoria’s Children’s Court, it was noted.

For LIV president Stuart Webb, the funding items focusing on reducing youth offending seem to be “short-term spends rather than a commitment to ongoing programs that target the factors that drive offending behaviour in young people”.

While an “increase in police resources and the $1.8 billion spend on prison infrastructure must be matched by a commensurate spend on rehabilitative services to keep people out of prison in the first place”, he continued.

The LIV has also highlighted its support of initiatives to help reduce women offenders through funding of mental health services and programs to assist Aboriginal women.

It noted too, the allocation of $85 million for men’s behaviour change programs and intensive management of violent offenders, which the LIV called “a substantial spend in one of the most urgent crime categories [of] family violence”.

The provision of another 44 extra child protection workers last year, to a value of $30 million, has also been noted by the LIV as being “recognition of the desperate need in the beleaguered system”.

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In the statement released earlier this week, the institute said it is “pleased” with the fulfilled election promise to build a new Bendigo Court, but considered “ageing infrastructure in regional courts generally still needs attention”.

And while legal aid funding looks set to receive a six per cent increase over three years, the LIV said “this merely tracks CPI and does not take account of the increase in population and legislative changes that are bringing an increased number of people in contact with the justice system”.

Commenting on the budget measures as a whole, Mr Webb said “we’re getting 3,000 more police but we’re not providing commensurate downstream resources to support the increase pressure this will place on the courts and legal aid to address the consequent demand on those services”.

As a result, the LIV has suggested, and will continue to advocate for, the use of ‘Justice Impact Statements’ to understand downstream effects of significant policy decisions, such as employing so many new police.

According to the organisation, such an approach “will provide a holistic view of the sector when placing resources in one aspect of the justice system needs resources provided in the remainder of the sector”.

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