Music can provide incarcerated youth with opportunities to build confidence, engage with learning, develop social skills, and and redefine themselves from young offenders to young artists.
A neuroscientist explains how detention can affect a developing mind, as a new law in California sets the highest age limit in the US for minors to be held criminally responsible, at age 12.
Preliminary research into the Chess for Life Program in Alberta, Canada, shows that youth who are sentenced to chess instruction after committing non-violent crimes are learning useful life skills.
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In Alberta, an alternative initiative sees youth who commit non-violent crimes sentenced to 25 hours of chess instruction with a University of Lethbridge professor.
If youths with brain impairment had been identified and supported early, their entry into the justice system could have been avoided entirely.
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New research assessing young people in WA detention found 89% were severely impaired in at least one area of brain function. One in three had fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD).
Plans for an industrial school in Feltham, England.
Charles William Sheeres, Banks and Barry via Wellcome Images
The reconviction rates of children put in institutions was lower than it is today, new research shows.
To improve on a building like the Don Dale centre, design that properly considers human behaviour needs to take priority for its replacement.
Neda Vanovac/AAP
Architecture can affect behaviour and the choices we make. The brief is out for a centre to replace the Don Dale facility, but word is, it’s ‘a disgrace’. We can do much better.
Riots have hit youth detention centres in both Australia and the US.
AAP
Australian jurisdictions should enact permanent solutions to juvenile justice crises that replace large and ineffective youth prisons with a safer, more decent alternative.
Policymakers are reluctant to acknowledge the care system is producing criminals.
AAP/Neda Vanovac
What the Northern Territory’s experience with state interventions reveals is that rather than protecting young people, it has placed them at greater risk of mistreatment and trauma.
Rather than assisting in prevention and allowing children to mature out of offending, juvenile detention does the opposite.
AAP/Neda Vanovac
Important questions are being asked about why children were abused in juvenile detention in the Northern Territory. But we also need to ask why children are being detained at all.
Brian Martin (centre) resigned as royal commissioner following perceived conflicts of interest relating to his and his daughter’s former roles.
AAP/Andrew Taylor
Professor, The Centre of Best Practice in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention, the Poche Centre for Indigenous Health, The University of Western Australia