When youth crime gets a 'beat up'

I’ve been thinking…

…about Queensland’s increasingly tough approach to young people.

To be clear, this isn’t an argument against consequences for serious offending, nor against sensible regulation where young people are being seriously injured or killed.

Youth crime causes real harm. Victims matter. And anyone who has seen the consequences of some of the recent e-bike and e-scooter accidents would understand why governments feel pressure to act.

But I wonder whether we’re paying enough attention to the cumulative message our young people might be hearing.

In relatively quick succession, Queensland has seen:

- “Adult Crime, Adult Time” laws and the removal of some traditional youth justice safeguards

- increasingly punitive approaches to youth bail and detention (the QLD government itself acknowledging the inconsistency with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child)

- significant public and political focus on young people as a community safety problem

- new restrictions on young people’s use of e-scooters and other e-mobility devices

- and, on top of that, the new Australia-wide social media minimum age rules

Each policy may have a legitimate rationale, but young people don’t experience government policy – or the broader rules society imposes on them – in isolation.

Their experience obviously has a much broader cultural context. And I wonder whether, in our determination to protect young people from risk – and protect society from young people who create risk – we’re slowly removing the spaces where young people get to practice independence, responsibility, and belonging.

I’m ‘of an age’ where none of this affects me directly. But I grew up in Thatcher’s Britain from the late 70s into the 80s. A lot of young people then felt disenfranchised, economically excluded and profoundly anti-establishment. We weren’t all rioting in the streets – plenty of us were simply apathetic and unconvinced the future held much for us.

When

Of course, some fantastic music came out of that period too. But alienation isn’t harmless just because it produces a great soundtrack.

Because if enough young people start feeling alienated from the institutions and society around them, that eventually becomes everyone’s problem. Sometimes you get rebellion; more often, you just get disengagement.

Anyway, just a thought from someone who remembers what generational disenfranchisement felt like. And if Queensland is heading towards its own (youth) culture of alienation, I suppose we can at least look forward to some great music.