Juvenile Justice in Queensland
The Juvenile Justice and Other Acts Amendment Act 2009 reviewed the previous Queensland's Juvenile Justice Act 1992. Besides renaming it Youth Justice Act (YJA) 1992, the government proposed several amendments to improve the justice system in Queensland. However, those same amendments are justified only by media statements that predict forever-rising crime rates and their prevalence against the justice system which is always described as too soft or inefficient. Unlike media depictions, scientific research presents the complexity of factors that are the actual underlying causes of criminal behaviour. Because those factors originate from a variety of sources, scientific research suggests that a narrow focus on stricter legal measures against perpetrators is not an adequate solution to the causes of youth criminal behaviour. According to the government, the Act was changed because the authorities wanted to decrease youth criminal behaviour, meet community expectations, and resolve the underlying causes. However, from a contemporary sociological perspective, that is an incorrect approach to solving issues because the government’s amendments only enforce stricter punishments for perpetrators without taking other relevant factors into account.
Several amendments were made to the YJA 1992. The government provided more specific powers to the legal system to use curfews on juvenile offenders because they consider that increased supervision will decrease the amount of reoffending cases. Furthermore, the court is allowed to name juvenile offenders, issue orders, and allow publications to identify juvenile offenders. The minimum verdict for manslaughter was raised from 15 to 20 years imprisonment. The police was given more authority to arrest and bring to court juvenile offenders who do not attend drug assessments, education sessions, or do not comply with agreements. All juveniles who will reach the age 18 during their sentence should be transferred from juvenile detention institutions to adult prisons. Finally, the new amendments have considered reducing remands by requiring courts to consider possible sentences when deciding on the bail and clarifying why a juvenile offender is remanded in detention. Other minor amendments were implemented to improve the functionality of relevant Acts.
However, that is the perspective of people who are obviously unfamiliar with social and psychological research that has identified the underlying causes of deviant behaviour. Popular views on criminal behaviour affect the entire justice system, but the consequences are particularly visible in the youth justice system. Contemporary criminology focuses on identifying adolescents as a separate subculture within society and fails to focus on their maturation process to eventually become adults (Sampson & Laub, 1993). The perspective that justifies tougher penalties for juvenile perpetrators focuses too much on youth as potential criminals rather than acknowledging them as potential victims and proposing constructive preventive solutions (Cunneen & White, 2007). Rather than presenting it as a random occurrence, scientific research identified both inherited risks and environmental risks that shape criminal behaviour.
According to Barry (2007), criminal behaviour cannot be properly explained through one perspective because several individual, structural, and cultural determinants that influence deviant behaviour overlap. The complexity of factors that contribute to criminal behaviour development and their interactions indicates that suppressing behaviour through legal regulations does not affect behavioural patterns directly or indirectly. After analysing common practices in the justice system, Andrews and Bonta (2010) concluded that the attempts to rely on the psychology of punishment failed because delivering the punishment resulted in suppressing behaviour while failing to address personality traits and social causes that hold more accountability for criminal behaviour. Andrews and Bonta (2010) propose models for offender rehabilitation that deal with criminogenic and noncriminogenic needs offer better and constructive long-term solutions to criminal behaviour. However, the government’s modification of the YJA 1992 does not encourage offender rehabilitation, so its current course of development cannot be justified by observing empirical data from criminal psychology research.
Modern criminology considers restorative justice and prevention as the key objectives in dealing with youth criminal behaviour. However, the practice of restorative justice cannot rely on stronger punishments and protocols because youth justice must focus on which interventions will result in the desired effects and what principles in the youth justice system will dominate (Allison & Gelsthorpe, 2006). The changes in the YJA 1992 do not focus on any long-term desired effects other than stronger punishments for deviant behaviour. Furthermore, it fails to implement critical policies, such as social, economic, health, and educational policies, that define the population’s well-being and directly influence some of the underlying causes of criminal behaviour development (Allison & Gelsthorpe, 2006). Finally, Allison and Gelsthorpe (2006) point out that the juvenile offenders usually have experiences of victimisation, deprivation, or neglect. The legal policy-makers must understand the common backgrounds of offenders to implement adequate policies because implementing stricter regulations only appeals to public paradigms while neglecting the country’s future integrity and individual well-being of perpetrators.
Because of previous paradigm shifts and advances in sociological research, contemporary legal regulations focus more on decisions that prevent criminal behaviour. However, the system still supports existing intervention policies that focus on punishments of deviant behaviour (France, 2008). However, further investigations prove that many legal changes, including the YJA 1992, do not understand the broad view of the onset, development, and manifestation of social problems (France, 2008). When reviewing all main amendments that have been introduced in the revised Act, they all focus on prevention only at the individual level. In reality, external influences and genetic predispositions contribute to criminal behaviour through dynamic interactions of several factors, so it is not possible to understand or influence criminal behaviour significantly through superficial approaches that exclude wider economic and social structures (Cunneen & White, 2006; MacDonald, 2006). Although the changes to the Act were apparently justified to satisfy the needs for safety in the community, their approach is not justified by sociological research because it does not introduce prevention measures and long-term solutions.
In the contemporary society, legal policy-makers need to be aware of current social problems and sociological research that proposes adequate solutions to those problems on many social levels. For example, Dawes (2002) states that low employment levels, academic achievements, and lack of leisure facilities are only some of the background causes of car theft for joyriding. Although detention is a logical intervention based on the reward and punishment system, Dawes (2002) indicates that the judicial system alone cannot transform criminal behavioural patterns, so alternative solutions, particularly those that aim at changing behavioural patterns, have to be considered. For example, when Dawes (2002) interviewed former car thieves, those who had left their old lifestyle admitted that their behaviour was narrow-minded because it did not consider the consequences of car theft for other people, social institutions, their friends, and themselves. Rather than focusing on improving punishments, an alternative solution would be to invest funds for solving the underlying causes social research identifies as potential risk factors to criminal behaviour.
Another important aspect that has to be considered when making justified and beneficial policies is the role of mediators on offender rehabilitation. Mediators are basically social agents because they represent external influences that affect individual development. A study by Eddy and Chamberlain (2000) found that family interactions and deviant peers account for 32 percent of variance for recurring offending behaviour. Family management skills, which include discipline, positive relationships among family members, and positive reinforcement, offer support to rehabilitation and directly affect the offenders’ needs to associate with deviant peers (Eddy & Chamberlain, 2000). While observing the study by Eddy and Chamberlain (2000), it is possible to notice that focusing on individual punishment or individual rehabilitation without considering their environment achieves fewer positive outcomes than treatments or interventions based on a wider scale in the community. Rather than focusing on isolating perpetrators from the community and disabling their chances for further transition into adulthood, identifying the causes within the community that support criminal behaviour development is the main focus of contemporary psychological, sociological, and criminological research papers.
Despite the strict legal regulations that exist, crime rates do not appear to diminish, and several social problems that cause them remain unsolved. Although legal regulations must exist to maintain the social structure, social research indicates that several factors influence the development of deviant behaviour, so the solution will have to focus on broad improvements within the community rather than isolating itself to a particular targeted social group. All factors that increase deviant behaviour inflict more damage to the community than each individual offense. Therefore, a successful justice system should deal with the common causes of all offensive behaviour rather than isolating and dealing with cases individually. With contemporary social research in mind, it is possible to state that the amendments made by the government are not consistent with empirical evidence, but they have been made exclusively for the purpose of satisfying public stereotypes and the need for safety. However, that can only lead to a false sense of security and short-term solutions, so the decisions made by the Queensland government in changing the YJA 1992 cannot be justified from a scientific perspective.
Allison, M., & Gelsthorpe, L. (2006). Towards good practice in juvenile justice policy in the Commonwealth. Commonwealth Law Bulletin, 32(1), 27-58. doi:10.1080/03050710600850215
Andrews, D. A., & Bonta, J. (2010). Rehabilitating the criminal justice policy and practice. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 16(1), 39-55. doi:10.1037/a0018362
Barry, M. (2007). Youth offending and youth transitions: The power of capital in influencing change. Critical Criminology, 15, 185-198. doi:10.1007/s10612-007-9024-6
Cunneen, C., & White, R. (2006). Australia: Control, containment or empowerment? In J. Muncie & B Goldson (Eds.), Comparative youth justice: Critical issues (pp. 97-110). London: SAGE Publications.
Cunneen, C., & White, R. (2007). Juvenile justice: Youth and crime in Australia (3rd ed.). Victoria: Oxford University Press.
Dawes, G. (2002). Figure eigths, spin outs and power slides: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth and the culture of joyriding. Journal of Youth Studies, 5(2), 195-208.
Eddy, J. M., & Chamberlain, P. (2000). Family management and deviant peer association as mediators of the impact of treatment condition on youth antisocial behavior. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 68(5), 857-863.
France, A. (2008). Risk factor analysis and the youth question. Journal of Youth Studies, 11(1), 1-15. doi:10.1080/13676260701690410
MacDonald, R. (2006). Social exclusion, youth transition and criminal careers: five critical reflections on ‘risk’. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 39(3), 371-383. doi:10.1375/acri.39.3.371
Sampson, R. J., & Laub, J. H. (1993). Crime in the making: Pathways and turning points through life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
