Inspections, reviews, inquiries and recommendations pertaining to youth justice centres in New South Wales between 2015 and 2021

ABSTRACT

It is widely recognised that there is a lack of analysis of criminal justice policy-making (and youth justice policy-making specifically) within the wider criminological project. To partially address the gap, this article focuses on one part of the dynamic and complex policy-making environment—reviews, inquiries and findings of oversight bodies between 2015 and 2021 relevant to youth detention in New South Wales (NSW). We estimate that the reports arising from these inquiries and reviews have generated approximately 1040 recommendations (approximately 590 relevant to Youth Justice NSW (YJNSW) broadly and 284 relevant to youth justice centres more specifically). The sheer volume of recommendations, some of which are very broad, raises questions about the ability of an agency, such as YJNSW, to implement them; about which recommendations might be prioritised; and how YJNSW might resolve conflicts between recommendations arising from different and often parallel processes. We suggest that, for the purposes of achieving the best outcomes for young people in custody, there might be greater merit in having fewer inquiries that deal with parts of youth detention and a coordinated and prioritised response to recommendations to address issues of youth detention.

KEYWORDS:

• oversight bodies
• policy
• public inquiries
• recommendations
• royal commissions
• young people
• youth detention

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Dr Elaine Fishwick for her helpful feedback on a previous draft of this paper and to the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Legislation and international conventions

Advocate for Children and Young People Act 2014 (NSW)

Children (Detention Centres) Act 1987 (NSW)

United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations 1989)

United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (United Nations 1985) (the Beijing Rules)

Notes

1 See, for example, reports such as: Amnesty International Australia, 2018, ‘The sky is the limit: Keeping young children out of prison by raising the age of criminal responsibility’; Australian Child Rights Taskforce (ACRT), 2018, ‘The children's report: Australia's NGO coalition report to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child’; and the Change the Record Coalition, 2017, ‘Free to be kids: National plan of action’ report, amongst others.