Juvenile Justice System Needs an Overhaul

More than half the children who commit a crime are reconvicted within a decade - most on multiple occasions. Fact not fiction.

The study, provided exclusively to the Herald, shows 54 per cent of 4938 juveniles who came into contact with police in 1999 were convicted again within 10 years. Of those, the offender was, on average, convicted again four times.

Meanwhile, violent juvenile crime rates in NSW jumped by 21.4 per cent between 2001 and 2010, driven by the spike in assaults. Violent crime is categorised as murder, assault, sexual offences and robbery.

Apart from assault, all other crime rates between 2001 and 2010 were stable or had dropped, apart from breaking into and entering a dwelling, which rose 13 per cent and malicious damage to property (up 47 per cent).

The dramatic rise in apprehended violence orders against juveniles is partly due to higher reporting rates. Youth workers say parents and carers increasingly seek them in a desperate attempt to control bad behaviour, partly due to the growing use of alcohol and drugs, but also because police are taking action on the parents' behalf.

Half of all juveniles detained by police test positive for drug use, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology.

The Department of Family and Community Services and the NSW Commission for Children and Young People said juvenile justice laws, now under review, were insufficient to address reoffending.

Don Weatherburn, the director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, said the Young Offenders Act 1997 needed to be overhauled with a huge cultural shift away from a ''hands-off attitude''.

The figures cannot be disputed so how should we handle young offenders?