Kids hooning around in stolen cars. Driving head-on at police. Baiting them into pursuits. All while live streaming.
A youth crime crisis has engulfed this outback town — and police believe social media is partly to blame.
It's just clicked past midnight in the outback township of Alice Springs.
The vast Central Australian sky hangs cloudless overhead, but below the town of about 26,000 people is far from quiet.
Revellers line the footpaths and hi-vis-vested cops churn through the crowd, stepping over broken glass as they go.
It's here the local youth night patrol driver says you often see "stolen cars flying up and down" the strip.
"It's usually really, really hectic and crazy," the driver, Western Arrernte woman Azalia Lockyer, says.
Tonight there are no speed racers, only badly dinged-up bush cars hobbling along with obliterated tail lights.
And a teenager on the sidelines, watching the chaos unfold around her.
"At home, you got nothing to do and there's not really family to look after [you], families be busy on grog," 14-year-old Rebecca* says, silver crucifixes dangling from her ears.
"That's why you have to just go for a walk, feel some fresh air."
She's standing just metres from where, a few weeks earlier, a group of teenagers swung from the tray of a stolen ute as the vehicle careened precariously through the town centre.
It wasn't a one-off. In the last two months, there's been a string of serious incidents involving teenagers and children in Alice Springs.
Kids driving stolen vehicles head-on at police cars.
Baiting them into pursuits.
Live streaming it all on social media.
According to police data, at least 65 minors were arrested in Alice Springs in the three months between September and December, 87 per cent of them Indigenous.
"I see those other kids how they do it, how they talk bad ways to the coppers," Rebecca says.
"I always tell the coppers, I'm not the person who does all that other bad stuff."
Around the corner, another group of young girls sit on a ledge in the township's main outdoor mall, giggling amongst each other.
"We're just here using wifi," one says, phone in hand, even as another declares that Alice Springs is "pretty dangerous at night".
It's kids like these, out late at night without supervision, that are the focus of the Northern Territory government's latest anti-crime push.
Under a new trial, teenagers and children like them could be picked up and taken to a safe house for a welfare evaluation — but critics warn that it won't be enough to put an end to the rampages.
"They see it as a game," Rebecca says.
"I don't see it as a game, I see it's really stupid and everything.
"But they see it, like, it's fun, like it's a good game, like ‘ah, we might get chased by the cops, let's do cop chase'."
Not just naughty kids
Tonight, Azalia Lockyer is observing the action from the driver's seat of her parked night patrol van.
She's ready to offer a lift home to any young person — from babies with their mothers to 18 year olds — who needs it, a service run by a local Aboriginal council.
"Usually we have tonnes of kids, and we're up and down, back and forth, doing pick ups and drop offs," she says.
"They've got no one to guide them, so of course, they're going to be out doing whatever they can … because half their parents would be out in town.
"If this is what Alice Springs is offering us, especially us locals, is it time for us to pack up and move now, because there are all these young people running our town?"
Lockyer is born and bred in Alice, and is more familiar than most with what goes on night after night, but even she no longer feels safe going out once the sun sets.
"The sad reality and sad truth is one day, [these kids] are either going to kill themselves or kill someone else," she says.
"And then what's going to happen?"
It's a question NT Police Assistant Commissioner Martin Dole has also reckoned with. In late 2020, before he was appointed to the position, a motorcyclist was killed when he was hit by a stolen car being driven by teenagers in Central Australia.
From his office in town, the Assistant Commissioner describes the current match of cat-and-mouse as "paramount to Grand Theft Auto".
"It's one-upmanship type behaviour, it's very much a dangerous game," he says. "It needs to be stopped, and it needs to be stamped out."
In an urgent bid to restore order, dozens of extra officers were temporarily deployed to the township last month.
But according to Assistant Commissioner Dole, it's not an issue unique to Alice Springs.
All across northern Australia, similar incidents are increasing in frequency, fuelled in part by what he calls an "alarming and disturbing" phenomenon of young people live streaming the behaviour to social media.
"There's a whole range of issues, intergenerational trauma … people need to remember that it is a complicated situation," he says.
"We're not just dealing with a cohort of naughty kids."
Alice Springs resident Kirra Voller knows many of these kids well. She's a youth advocate and teacher-in-training, who has managed to pull herself out of some difficult early years.
Some nights she says she drives around, picking up kids and taking them to McDonald's for a feed, where she acts as something of a counsellor.
"They're hurting inside, deep inside," she says.
"They can't see beyond five minutes in front of them.
"They don't think they're gonna live to see tomorrow."
There are currently more children and teenagers detained in Darwin’s Don Dale Detention Centre than there were when the royal commission into the territory’s youth justice system recommended its closure five years ago.
Almost all of these young people are Indigenous.
"A lot of these kids don't care if they live or die, because nobody else does," Voller says.
"They can't dream of what they're going to become when they're older, and they don't see that future — all they see is the next adrenaline rush."
Posting for kicks
Looking at recent incidents across Australia's north, the pattern is hard to miss. Whether it's Townsville in Queensland, the Kimberley in Western Australia, or Katherine and Alice Springs in the territory, the ingredients appear to be the same.
Teenagers and children stealing cars, joyriding dangerously, targeting police cars and ransacking businesses, at times for something as small as a bottle of coke.
At least two such sprees in Alice Springs last month were so dangerous the police took the unprecedented step of urging residents to stay out of the CBD.
"We’ve seen an increase in the prevalence of social media, making these kids stars, making them have viral hits overnight, posting some of these behaviours and trying to outdo each other," Assistant Commissioner Dole says.
"That’s a phenomenon we’re seeing across Australia.”
In Western Australia's Kimberley region, for example, residents say young people hooning in stolen cars is an almost nightly occurrence, with videos of the incidents often ending up on social media.
Meanwhile, NT Police say they've been forced to report multiple videos across various social media platforms, most of which have since been removed.
"We're not talking the Ice Bucket challenge here," says Dr Belinda Barnett, a senior lecturer at Swinbourne University whose research focuses on social media and digital platform regulation.
"It's a few videos that people have captured and they've got quite a few views on them ... the fact that so many people have seen them, there's the potential for copycats if there aren't already."
A number of jurisdictions, including the Northern Territory, are now working with the e-Safety Commission — a national government body tasked with safeguarding Australians against online dangers — to get a grip on the situation.
"The crimes we are talking about are obviously not new crimes," eSafety acting head of investigations Luke Boon says.
"But the phenomenon of using social media … to promote dangerous behaviour, and in some cases, criminal behaviour, is something that we've really only seen in the last 12 months."
The territory is the latest hotspot, he says, following Western Australia, Queensland and New South Wales.
Much of this is happening on TikTok, a Chinese-owned video-sharing platform that has grown in popularity largely off the back of its Gen Z user base.
According to its community guidelines, the company removes "content that depicts or promotes activities that may jeopardise youth well-being" as well as "content depicting, promoting, normalising or glorifying dangerous acts that may lead to serious injury or death", listing "dangerous driving behaviour" as a specific example.
While Boon says the social media giants are often quick to respond to requests from the commission or police, usually taking down videos within days, Barnett says they could be more proactive.
When videos of a similar spate of ram raids in New Zealand popped up on TikTok, she says it took about three months for the platform to take them down.
In one recent video, a car with people hanging out of the windows hoons around Alice Springs to the soundtrack of Tokyo Drift.
A warning generated by TikTok reads: "Participating in this activity could result in you or others getting hurt". But at the time of publishing, the post remains up.
"They are not taking it terribly seriously, they could certainly do a lot more," Barnett says.
In a statement, a TikTok spokesperson says all content is subject to their community guidelines, and they "actively remove content and ban accounts that breach these guidelines, and make reports to law enforcement when warranted".
But Barrett says it's equally important to interrogate why kids are making this kind of content in the first place. She believes posting these videos, especially when they become popular, is a way for disempowered kids to feel confident and in control.
"They've made that choice in their life, and they're kids, we have to remember that, so why have they made that choice? That's what we should be asking," she says.
The daylight aftermath
The wall of red ranges girding Alice Springs turns purple against the sinking sun.
The great Yipirinya — or caterpillar — formation dancing under the changing light towards darkness.
This is the Central Australia of tourism guidebooks.
The nation's red heart, where ancient Aboriginal culture meets a modern economic centre — smack bang in the middle of the continent.
But on this evening, just after 6pm, the town's main mall is deserted. "FOR LEASE" and shutting down sale signs occupy the windows of once-thriving businesses.
"I think it's come to the point where people are too scared to travel into the CBD," Alice Springs mayor Matt Paterson says.
"After about five o'clock they just have a perception that it's dangerous — and it is."
Police statistics reveal a sharp upward spike in crime in Alice Springs over the past five years, particularly in break-ins, theft, and a seemingly unabating wave of violence.
This year alone, in the 12 months to November, motor vehicle thefts have surged by 40 per cent, while commercial break-ins have risen 56 per cent, according to NT Police data.
The rate of youth reoffending across the territory is also at an at least five-year high.
It's left Paterson, a smartly dressed former sparky, questioning what's becoming of his town.
"I've lived here for 30 years, and it's never been this bad," he says.
"And it doesn't let up.
"The crime's getting worse, the destructive behaviour is getting worse, and these kids don't seem to care."
In the harsh light of day, the night’s rampages are all too visible; broken windows, trashed equipment and graffiti dot the town.
And staring down a future of never-ending clean-up costs and dwindling tourism dollars, business owners are fed up.
Kylie Johnston, a transport company co-director, is seemingly in perpetual motion; rushing around with a sick toddler, signing paperwork for an outbound truckie, chatting with colleagues.
But a spate of recent incidents has slowed her down. She says her business has endured property damage, theft, and even a small arson attack.
"I'm telling a story that probably a lot of businesses or business owners would be telling in Alice Springs," she says.
"Any damage or any crime that happens to a business essentially ends up costing you time and money.
"It's been really, really tricky, disheartening, just really sad."
Her husband, Mark Stanes, was born in Alice Springs — his family name is part of the town's economic fabric — but even they've started to wonder if it's worth sticking it out.
There's consensus among the town's business owners that there isn't enough focus on the victims of crime, especially when it's difficult to get any compensation.
"I think every single business owner in Alice Springs would, sadly, over the last six to 12 months, question: ‘why am I staying in business in Alice Springs?'," Johnston says.
While crime statistics capture offenders of all ages, many of the headlines in recent months involve children and teenagers.
But police and youth advocates are quick to note that the dysfunction seen in the statistics hasn't come out of nowhere.
Alarm bells have been ringing for years: dropping remote school attendance, insufficient funding for youth programs, soaring rates of domestic violence and crumbling housing infrastructure.
These issues have contributed to an exodus of Aboriginal people from remote communities into Alice Springs, not just from across the territory, but from South and Western Australia as well.
"When you neglect the bush, when you don't put the resources into the bush housing [and] bush programs for young people, the bush is going to come into areas like Alice Springs," federal politician Marion Scrymgour, whose electorate covers the vast majority of the territory, said last month.
When you ask those in Alice what's behind the onslaught of youth offending, they usually take in a big gulp of air before rattling off a long list of complicated and intertwined factors.
But the one thing most people — from youth workers to police and kids themselves — agree on, is it starts with a troubled home environment.
"I can't put my finger on a single reason that this is occurring, why we've got such a high reoffending rate, such a high uptake rate," Assistant Commissioner Dole says.
"What I can tell you is we're seeing a lot of kids who haven't been involved with this behaviour before."
For Kirra Voller, the answer comes down to young people not getting enough support.
"There’s an African proverb: ‘A child that is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth’,” she says.
"These kids are running rampant in this town because no one is wrapping their arms around them. And at the end of the day, they’re just kids."
Finding a way forward
As community angst reached a fever pitch last month, the territory government pulled out a new defence.
In early November, ministers announced plans for a so-called "circuit-breaker" that would see unsupervised youth out late at night picked up and taken to a safe house for evaluation, looking for signs of abuse or neglect.
A trial is now underway, but some have noted its limits.
Young people taken to the safe house are able to leave at any time — meaning after they’re assessed, they could quickly be back on the streets.
"Their behaviour is risky, it is not unlawful, and we need to be very careful around that," Chief Minister Natasha Fyles says.
Some community leaders say the measure doesn't go far enough, including senior Alyawarre man and Alice Springs councillor Michael Liddle, who believes the kids need to be relocated further away from town.
It's so far unclear if the trial will be a success, or if it will push vulnerable young people further out of sight, but some aren't waiting idly by to find out.
Arrernte man Tyson Carmody questions the current approach of putting more police on the ground, describing it as a "short-term fix to a long-term problem".
On Alice Springs's outskirts in the shade of a handmade shelter, his amiable demeanour belies his forceful words.
"We've been waiting for a long time, and nothing's been changing," he says.
"If anything, it's getting worse."
Carmody runs a support service called Kings Narrative, which aims to help young Aboriginal men reconnect with their culture and become "authors of our own story".
The service simultaneously seeks to help young men contribute to western society and find economic value in their culture, like by selling homemade bush medicine.
"It's up to us as small businesses, as family members, to move this forward and to address this," Carmody says.
"And really provide a culturally safe place for our kids to grow up feeling valued, feeling strong, feeling connected and feeling loved."
He acknowledges the pain in the wider community as a result of the constant threat of crime, but still holds "great hope" for change.
"We keep doing the same things over and over again, looking for a different result, and it's almost like putting our heads in the sand," he says.
"We really need to be creative and courageous about how we do things differently, and sometimes we need to go back to the old ways of our culture to go forward.
"It's that foundation of who we are that needs to be strong."
Among the Kings Narrative staff is Chris Hagan, a 26-year-old Arrernte-Anmatjere man who sees a void in his community — a void he's hoping to help fill.
"Younger leadership, fellas like myself, older brothers, the men of the groups of these younger people, being the big brother role," he says.
"I feel like you don't see the older fellas around to help sort them out, discipline them, have a yarn about what we can and can't do."
Hagan knows it's not going to be easy to convince a jaded public, reverse intractable social problems and instil lost young men and women with a renewed sense of hope and purpose.
The hurdles on the track to get there are monumental.
But, he says, the risk of not trying is far worse.
"If we don't do this now, and do it right, then our next generation of younger men and women, our culture, it might just slowly fade away," he says.
Back in the city centre at midnight, the young Warlpiri girl, Rebecca, doesn't seem deterred by the generational issues playing out around her.
She speaks about her hopes for the future with optimism.
She speaks like any other young person wanting to make a go of this life.
"In the future, I want to work as a police [officer], one day, make this town more nice and perfect," she says.
"One day my future will be alright."
*Not real names
Credits
Words: Matt Garrick and Maani Truu
Digital production: Maani Truu
Photos and videos: Michael Franchi
