Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is facing renewed calls to convene an urgent national youth justice summit, as states and territories continue rolling out policies critics say are harming Indigenous children and young people.
More than 200 lawyers, academics, advocates and Indigenous organisations have signed an open letter to Mr Albanese, urging him to treat the mass over-incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children as a national emergency.
"From coast to coast across our lands, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are being criminalised and imprisoned at alarming rates because of political point-scoring rather than evidence-based reforms. This is an emergency," the letter, organised by the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service (NATSILS), reads.
"And Prime Minister, this has happened under your watch."
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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children remain dramatically over-represented in detention, with incarceration rates more than 25 times those of non-Indigenous children nationally.
Despite commitments under the Closing the Gap agreement, both Labor and Liberal governments continue to introduce tougher laws and harsher penalties for children and young people.
"We are the experts on what our children need; we know what will stop them from entering into a cycle of crime, caused by generational trauma that violent colonial systems have imposed on our people for centuries," the letter states.
NATSILS acting chair Nerita Waight said Australians were being presented with a "false choice between safety and children's rights", arguing that increased incarceration delivers neither.
"Locking children up not only inflicts trauma on the child, but it also increases the likelihood that they will reoffend as an adolescent or adult — ultimately increasing future crime," she said.
Ms Waight argues the "shameful crisis" demands national leadership, describing the letter as a "warning flare — act now, or own the consequences of a new generation being locked up for political gain".
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Appearing before a Senate inquiry into youth justice last month, SNAICC - National Voice for our Children chief executive, Catherine Liddle, said urgent national coordination was needed to shift away from punitive responses and toward prevention and early intervention.
"There are steps the Federal Government could take right now that would have an immediate effect on the numbers of our children being incarcerated in youth justice," Ms Liddle said.
In its submission to the same inquiry, the Victorian Aboriginal Child and Community Agency (VACCA) called for national minimum standards in youth justice, including raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14 without exceptions and banning the detention of children under 16.
"The implementation of national minimum standards for youth justice is essential given the experiences of incarcerated Aboriginal children and young people," VACCA submitted.
"This is even more pressing as...several states have recently enacted laws that are likely to result in a substantial increase in incarceration rates of Aboriginal children and young people."
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The federal government has consistently maintained that youth justice settings — including the minimum age of criminal responsibility — are matters for states and territories. The Prime Minister has backed that position, saying in his Closing the Gap address in February that jurisdictions "have every right to put the safety of their communities first".
However, legal advice obtained last year by the Justice and Equity Centre from barristers Kate Eastman AM SC and Emma Dunlop found the Commonwealth could intervene under section 51(xxix) of the Constitution to meet its international human rights obligations.
International scrutiny has also intensified. Delegates from the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention were denied access to both Unit 18 and Banksia Hill Detention Centre in Western Australia, as well as all Northern Territory prisons. The group described Australia's youth justice system as a "stain on Australia's reputation".
Over the past two years, children as young as 11 have been held in adult watch houses, the Northern Territory has reintroduced spit hoods in youth detention facilities despite explicit recommendations from the Don Dale Royal Commission, and state premiers have publicly championed life sentences for children.
Both the Victorian and Queensland governments have openly acknowledged their 'adult time for adult crime' policies breach their own human rights charters.
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The letter's signatories say the Prime Minister and his government "promised to be a government that supports reconciliation with, and a more just society for, First Nations people".
"But when 36 per cent of the prison population is Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and with the continuing and shameful lack of progress on justice outcomes under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, it is not possible for you to achieve this vision without urgent and meaningful action to change the justice system," they argue.
"It's time for you to take urgent and meaningful action to protect our children and our communities. The time is now, our children deserve better futures."
