EVER since shocking footage of the mistreatment of juvenile offenders in the Northern Territory sparked a royal commission last year, crime and the social issues that go with it have been front of mind in the public consciousness.http://www.ntnews.com.au/lifestyle/stop-this-neverending-crime-cycle-of-insanity/news-story/ebc007fdae0ba43edc3e198036849295And while the commissioners focused their attention on the treatment of young people in detention and the protection of children in general, the underlying offending continued unabated.
Just last month, as the commission handed down its final report, property crime and street violence continued to make headlines across the Territory.
In Alice Springs, management at the iconic National Road Transport Hall of Fame revealed it was considering relocating, citing the cost of dealing with repeated targeting by criminals, while ongoing issues with unruly youth prompted fed-up traditional owners to warn the town was “under siege”.
Meanwhile in Darwin, break-ins continue to frustrate business owners and terrify residents, many of whom no longer feel safe in their own homes as a result.
Police say they are getting on top of the issue, with property offences falling to 580 in Darwin in September, down from a 12-month high of 803 in January and March, after peaking at 2350 across the Territory at the start of the year.
“Following a few months of higher levels of property offending across the Darwin Metropolitan Command, it is good to see that the efforts of frontline police, supported by Strike Force Trident and the community, has seen a solid decline in property crime across the command,” Darwin Metropolitan Commander James O’Brien says.
And while long-time Top End residents may be sceptical the dip will be anything more than a temporary lull, seen countless times before only to rise again during decades of policy failure under successive governments, those at the coalface say they are optimistic the tide may finally be turning.
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VICTIMS of Crime NT chief executive Jeff Stanton knows only too well how devastating break-ins can be for those who find themselves the target of criminals.
In his role at VCNT, he speaks for those whose voices are often lost among the headlines and statistics, and says break-ins top their list of concerns.
“It affects your whole feeling of security — have you locked all the doors at night-time? Are all the windows shut? It makes people closed-in, not feeling confident to get out in the street and go see the neighbours,” he says.
“It creates fearful communities and fearful individuals. Building a sense of community is one of the best ways to prevent break-ins, but when that’s broken down, people are very isolated and they get scared — and understandably scared.”
Mr Stanton is critical of the royal commission for paying scant attention to the perspective of victims, having dedicated “one page and a third out of about 700 pages” to their point of view.
“On one side it wasn’t their role to do that, it was looking at youth justice, Don Dale and what happened there, but we were disappointed that more attention wasn’t given to what victims wanted in that report,” he says. And while welcoming the commission’s recommendations in general, Mr Stanton says it is critical victims are able to play a role in their implementation.
“There’s nothing worse than feeling like you’ve been seriously impacted by crime and then you’re expected to sit down, shut up and stay in the corner,” he says.
“You want to get it out, you want to express what’s happened and you want to see that justice is done and something changes — and the pathway for how that can happen is not in that report.
“Until you really include a formalised process for involvement of victims you raise the level of anger in the community and you raise the possibility of the situation getting worse.”
But now, for the first time in decades, Mr Stanton says the ‘tough on crime’ policies that have been winning votes in the Territory since the dawn of self-government are being rethought.
And despite the kneejerk support those policies often draw from frustrated victims of crime who feel their voice has been ignored, Mr Stanton says that’s a good thing.
“Looking at it practically, what’s been happening in the Northern Territory hasn’t worked. That’s obvious to everybody,” he says.
“So when people say the solution is lock-’em-up-and-throw-away-the-key type solutions, all you’re doing is producing more people that are going to come out the other end and be more violent, more aggressive and have more anger and more crime.
“What’s happening here now, for the first time in my memory — and I’ve been backwards and forwards to Darwin since 1972 — the government’s seriously looking at alternatives.”
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JEFF Stanton is not alone. In the wake of the royal commission — and despite the ongoing challenges many Territory communities face, including the intergenerational disadvantage present in many indigenous communities — optimism appears to be the prevailing mood.
Steve Versteegh, the executive director of Aboriginal drug and alcohol rehab organisation FORWAARD, says he also believes things are “moving in the right direction”.
“We are far more optimistic with the way in which things are being approached these days,” he says. “We’ve certainly had more opportunities to receive clients coming to our program so we’re at capacity at the moment and have been for probably nine months now.
“Certainly from our perspective we’ve had some really good success in terms of supporting people back to healthy living and healthy lifestyles, helping them get back to their families and their country.”
At the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency, principle legal officer David Woodroffe is similarly upbeat, but says it’s now time for governments to follow through on what he sees as a “new mindset” stemming from the royal commission process.
“I think fundamentally the royal commission was so important to the Northern Territory — it’s so important because it is about everyone having a new mindset about how we should be working in youth justice — and not just in government policy, but in our laws, in our policing, but also in communities,” he says.
“How do we make our communities safer and how do we actually do things (other than) the old ways of (being) tough on crime? How do we make our communities safer by making children safer in their homes with their families?”
But unanswered questions aside, when it comes to conjecture about whether real change is actually possible, Mr Woodroffe is unequivocal.
“It has to happen because we can’t go back to the same old ways of doing things,” he says.
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PREDICTING the future is always a fraught business, but for Jeff Stanton the equation comes back to a question of sanity.
“What did Einstein say: ‘What’s the definition of insanity? When you keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect to get a different result.’ The Territory for years was doing the same thing over and over again and look at the result, it’s got worse not better,” he says.
“If you come and talk to me in a year’s time and the situation’s the same I’ll be the first one to say ‘it’s stuffed’.
“But to go back to my definition of insanity, it ain’t gonna work doing the same thing any more. The community’s got to be prepared to give a chance for some of the things to change.”
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12 October 2018 at 12:04
