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.
Australia should look to the New Zealand model, which has a strong focus on community, and recognises that the majority of young people grow-out of participating in crime.
Children are still being held in police cells and juvenile detention for low-range offences, under alarming conditions. Here’s how their mental health and future prospects suffer.
One year after the Royal Commission into Northern Territory child detention recommended big changes, little of substance has been done to tackle the problem by the NT Labor government.
Psychotropic medication is ‘pharmaceutical violence’ against migrant children and other incarcerated youth throughout the United States. Drug addiction is one consequence.
Research reveals that the factors that put youth at risk of sexual assault while in custody are significantly different from those that put adults at risk in prison.
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).
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.
What’s shocking about the treatment of detainees in youth detention is not so much the treatment of those vulnerable people, but that it is happening in a wealthy country like Australia.