Wednesday, 29 May 2024

Youth crime prevention

Ellen SANDELL (Melbourne) (09:55): Labor’s latest budget cuts $1.8 million from Victoria’s Youth Support and Advocacy Service for their program to keep kids out of prison. That money funded 11 workers to provide early intervention support for 330 at-risk youth. Prison hurts kids. These programs and workers help kids, and yet Labor has cut them. A mum recently told the ABC that if her kid’s support worker Tracy had not come into his life when she did, he would probably be in Parkville ‍– that is the youth detention centre – right now. But next month Tracy and 10 of her colleagues will be out of a job, and 330 at-risk kids will lose that safety net.

Labor says they cannot afford the $1.8 million to keep these kids out of prison, but they can afford $34 million to shackle kids with ankle monitors and a lifetime of stigma. Labor says this budget was tight and cuts had to be made, but they happened to find an 8 per cent increase in the budget for Victoria Police, not to mention the billions for new prisons. This comes off the back of the Yoorrook Justice Commission recommendations, including important recommendations about how to keep First Nations kids out of the criminal justice system. Yet how many of those recommendations has the Labor state government accepted? Just four out of 48 – less than 10 per cent. Labor must turn this around. Instead of more prisons and police, we need more programs to keep kids out of prison. And how much would reinstating the funding cost? Two, maybe three, ankle bracelets.