Police Minister Felix Ellis has cast a further cloud over his government’s commitment to implementing the recommended therapeutic approach to youth justice in parliament today.
During the election campaign the Liberals announced their intention to create a “strike force” to target young people. The Commissioner for Children and Young People responded by criticising a “blatant disregard for the rights of children.”
The Liberals’ election policy is clearly contradictory to the strong recommendations made by the Commission of Inquiry, which focused on the need for a therapeutic approach to youth justice. That’s why the Greens asked Minister Ellis in parliament which path his government would choose – a punitive and harmful approach that doesn’t work, or the evidence-based approach set out by the Commission of Inquiry.
The Minister’s response to our question about therapeutic youth justice was to describe such an approach on “weak on crime” and to double down on the need to lock up more children. These are deeply disturbing statements, especially in the wake of the Commission of Inquiry.
The Rockliff government should be strongly backing the COI’s recommendations. Instead, we have a Police Minister taking a stance that’s completely contradictory.
We’ve already seen Minister Jaensch put the brakes on the closure of Ashley Youth Detention Centre, despite the COI saying it should be urgently closed. Now it seems Minister Ellis is pushing to ditch a therapeutic approach to youth justice completely. This is a grave concern.
