WHAT IS IT LIKE IN YOUR COUNTRY

KID CRIMINALS RUNNING AMOK

ONLINE FAKES SICKEN

Editorial in Herald Sun Thursday June 13, 2024

Far too many serious child offenders in the youth justice system are being bailed multiple times without any hint that reform is being achieved.

On Wednesday, the Herald Sun revealed the case of a 14-year-old who has had 388 charges struck out because of his age and is now accused of committing six burglaries in six hours – including stealing a woman’s car at knifepoint – just hours after he was bailed for other offences.

The teen has been assessed as having “extremely limited moral reasoning”, and previous charges were dismissed on the doli incapax legal principle that assumes children aged under 14 generally can’t be held cognitively and morally responsible for crimes but which can be challenged and rebutted by prosecution evidence.

Yet this teen’s repeated offending involving high-speed driving, aggravated burglaries, violent threats and attempting to avoid police capture – including by changing his clothes – shows there is not just premeditation but a degree of sophistication in the high-level offences and awareness that getting caught means further charges.

In the end, as the most recent magistrate’s decision has shown, community protection has to carry weight and the alleged offender’s bail was finally denied. While this is an extreme case, there are several hundred hardened juvenile offenders who have also been granted too many chances on bail.

All of this makes the Allan government’s plans to lift the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12 by the end of 2024, and then lift it again to 14 by 2027, with exceptions for certain serious crimes – a dangerous and counter-productive move.

Unless there are real penalties for serious teenage offending, particularly where violence and public threats are involved, a continued procession of offending is likely. Such an approach undermines public safety and enables subsequent offending.

In April, a 14-year-old allegedly crashed a stolen car into a young family in Berwick. He was on eight sets of bail at the time when he was accused of T-boning the vehicle which had a mum and two kids inside. Just 20 hours before the incident, he had been released from custody on charges of car theft and leading police on a pursuit.

New statistics provided to the Herald Sun show that a juvenile offender allegedly breaches bail every three hours in Victoria, and youths aged 12-17 breached bail more than 2770 times last year.

Of 487 “hard-core” individual offenders, kids aged 12-14 breached bail a total of 572 times.

The Allan government altered youth bail laws in March, including the abolition of committing an indictable offence while on bail – a change that risks reducing transparency on the level of juvenile recidivism.

It will trial tracking some youth offenders with electronic bracelets, and it upheld the “reverse onus test” – dropping plans to give juveniles the presumption of bail.

The latest crime data shows that while overall state crime rates have decreased, a small but not insignificant cohort of young, repeat offenders is running amok.

Offences committed by kids aged between 10 and 11 have spiked by more than 65 per cent in the past year. In total, 1589 youths aged 10-17 committed three or more separate crimes – a 19 per cent increase since 2022.

Victoria Police’s Operation Alliance is now trying to keep tabs on 620 known youth gang members. The approach of recent years is simply not working, and for those juvenile offenders that refuse to take the chances offered for reform, public safety has to be the priority in all bail decisions.

Once again, the horrendous damage of online exploitation through the misuse of technology is making headlines.

The latest example relates to the alleged use of artificial intelligence technology to digitally manipulate the images of young girls and superimpose them on explicit material.

For the victims at Bacchus Marsh Grammar and their families, the fake images that were circulated online are sickening.

Victoria Police has arrested a teenage boy, who has since been released pending further investigation and, if charges are laid, the matter will be a matter for the courts.

But the case is a reminder of just how destructive the mix of technology and a failure of online platforms to prevent or quickly remove such material can be.

It is believed images of about 50 girls were taken from social media and manipulated with AI to create the obscene material.

The Herald Sun has campaigned over recent months for the need to hold social media platforms and other online sites accountable for material it allows to be published and to ensure its own AI tools detect, remove and report such breaches to authorities.

Deepfakes, disinformation, abuse and crime need to be treated with zero tolerance by big tech platforms and schools and families must drive home messages of gender respect to teenagers.

This is Australia. What is it like in ypur country?