James Arbuthnott
Aug 9, 2017 · 2 min read

While seven in 10 young people committing burglaries and other crimes are born in Australia, media hype might lead you to blame a particular migrant community, according to a prominent welfare worker.

Carmen Guerra, community practitioner of 20 years and author of Ethnic Youth Gangs in Australia: do they exist?, as well as the first comprehensive study on the needs of refugee young people in Australia, spoke at the Melbourne Convention Centre this week with the World Congress on Public Health.

While youth crime decreases, Melbourne’s ‘youth gangs’ from refugee and migrant communities have sparked local concern for their integration into Australian society. Guerra blames the media for rising community concern amid government idleness, which she says, “If you read the local paper, you would not know that figure.”

Guerra says research and evidence “has no weight” in government decisions: “Researchers spend a whole lot of time giving us evidence, and the government doesn’t like to have evidence- they’d rather go with what they think needs to be done.”

“It’s a really complex issue… there are a group of [migrants] who are highly damaged young people, historically, who have been committing crimes from a young age.” said Guerra. “I sit on the youth parole board. Most of you would not want to hear the stories that I hear about what society has done to some of the young people who are interfacing with the criminal justice system.”

Successive governments and Australian judicial systems are not implementing research-based policy, says Guerra, and that the ‘problematising’ and jailing of these groups is counterintuitive.

New research shows Australia has “almost epidemic levels” of adolescents suffering from mental health issues, says George Patton, Professor of Adolescent Health Research with the University of Melbourne. While policy failure of successive governments for immigration and education is “problematising… them, rather than seeing what they contribute.”

Australia’s judicial system is expanding sentencing and jailing of young people, says Guerra: “Texas and Dallas are closing jails, but in Australia, we want to open a lot of them.”

“I think we have to remember that… a lot of [young migrant criminals] come from very damaged backgrounds. That doesn’t excuse the crimes, but it is an indicator of why young people get involved in crime.” says Guerra.

“I don’t think that our justice system has come to terms with the fact that we need to deal with this group differently. We can’t lock them up; locking them up is not going to make any difference.”

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