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.
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.
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.
Australian jurisdictions should enact permanent solutions to juvenile justice crises that replace large and ineffective youth prisons with a safer, more decent alternative.
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.
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.