For David Murray, the latest debate about youth crime in Victoria feels like “groundhog day”.
After four decades working in youth justice, he says the issue generally returns to the front page of newspapers – usually accompanied by headlines declaring a crime “crisis” or “wave” – after a high-profile incident.
Then, he says, come the calls for a “crackdown”.
“Time and time again, we have panic and alarm being driven by awful events,” he says. “Something awful has happened, then we spend a lot of time and energy debating and discussing what we should do as a response. The answer usually offered up is ‘lock them up’.”
But this time, Murray – a senior leader at Jesuit Social Services, which runs diversion and supervision programs across Melbourne – says he has been encouraged by the government’s more cautious response.
The issue has made headlines again after a teenager charged over a car crash that killed a man had allegedly breached his bail within 48 hours. His bail has since been revoked and he has been remanded into custody.
A day before the crash, police had set up “crime reduction teams” targeting young repeat offenders accused of assaults, burglaries and car thefts.
But Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows only the Australian Capital Territory and South Australia have a lower youth offender rate than Victoria. Just 12% of all crime across the state was the result of youth offending in 2022-23, the data suggests.
There were 8,175 offenders aged between 10 and 17 in Victoria over the same period – an increase of 16%.
Murray says all data is “open to interpretation” but most of those working the sector know they are dealing with a “small group of kids” in a “small number of postcodes”.
“The prospect of going into custody, for them, is no punishment,” he says. “For many of them, it’s the only stable place they’ve been, which is pretty sad.”
Victoria’s attorney general, Jaclyn Symes, has said while crime statistics have remained “relatively static”, a cohort of young “repeat offenders” were of concern.
“We know that there’s community fear and we want to send a very strong message that the government is focused on this,” she told reporters on Wednesday.
She said most repeated offenders were known to police and had “vulnerabilities that are not unique”.
“They have come from trauma backgrounds, a lot of out-of-home care kids, they [have suffered] family violence, they have been victims themselves,” she said.
Becoming a statistic
Data from the Victorian Crime Statistics Agency released in June shows a 20% increase in youth offender incidents over a 12-month period.
But when accounting for longer-term population growth, the figures remain relatively stable. In 2024 there were 3,365 offenders per 100,000 persons aged between 10 and 17 – not dissimilar from 3,358 in 2017.
CSA data also showed the 2024 crime rate (the offence rate per 100,000 people) still remains lower than figures recorded before the pandemic began.
This week, as media commentators highlighted the 12-month rise in youth crime, Symes met police, courts, child protection and youth justice workers to discuss possible solutions, including whether bail could be revoked more often.
“If we are seeing repeat offenders, depending on the brief [of evidence, and] depending on what they’re doing – if they’re committing more offences – I want to see more discussion and more effort put into revocation of bail,” Symes said.
She said having a child on bail – with appropriate supports and monitoring in place – ensure they remained connected to family and services, which helped them stay out of the criminal justice system and made them “more likely to not become an adult offender”.
There’s also the possibility of bringing forward an already announced trial of ankle bracelet monitors for youth on bail, boosting the capacity of the children’s court, and upgrading “aggravated burglary” from a property crime to a crime against the person, which carries a harsher penalty.
The former are contained in the thousand-page youth justice bill, to be debated in parliament this month, though the latter would require legislative changes.
Andrew Bruun, the chief executive of the Youth Support and Advocacy Service, which provides a range of outreach and support programs for young people, says he is broadly supportive of the bill with the exception of the “stigmatising” ankle bracelet trial.
He says most youth offenders had previously been “disconnected”. “Whether that’s family, their community, their culture but maybe even from sports clubs, school and work,” he says.
“Then they find other young people involved in what you might call high-risk or antisocial behaviour, which often involves crime and that becomes part of what they do together. That’s part of how they form their identity.
“So we have to help young people develop a different identity.”
Bruun adds: “If you get to know them, they do care about things. They’re not bad people, they’re just making bad decisions.”
