To put it in language those in the Victorian government who are enamoured of tabloid newspapers and talkback radio will understand: are these new laws tough on crime, or merely a coward punch?
A decision by the Victorian government to introduce adult crime, adult time laws has been widely condemned as an easy way out, getting in first with a cheap shot rather than having to duke it out on youth crime with a rabble of a Coalition at next year’s state election. It may work politically, but will it work as policy?
The evidence suggests not. It creates more victims of crime. It is putting an extra padlock on the back door while leaving the front wide open.
The national children’s commissioner, the Law Council of Australia, even the conservative Institute of Public Affairs agree: the best way to prevent violent offending is to increase investment in crime prevention, not to lock up more people for longer.
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Just last year the Victorian government raised the age of criminal responsibility, justifying this by using the same evidence it is now ignoring about what works.
“We know that disproportionate criminal justice interventions actually increase rather than decrease the risk of offending for children and young people,” someone said at the time.
Queensland's laws
• Child offenders as young as 10 can face adult sentences for serious offences.
• Young offenders convicted of murder face mandatory life imprisonment with a non-parole period of at least 20 years.
• The laws originally applied to 13 offences such as murder, manslaughter, home and business break-ins and robbery and dangerous operation of a vehicle.
• In May, an additional 20 offences were added, including attempted murder, rape, attempted rape, torture, aggravated attempted robbery and trafficking in dangerous drugs.
• Restorative justice orders, designed to divert young people from court, have been removed as a sentencing option for young people convicted of one of these offences.
Victorian Labor's proposed laws
• Children as young as 14 will be sentenced as adults for certain offences in the state's county court.
• This means the county court will treat children like adults, with longer sentences and more time in prison.
• The county court can impose prison sentences of up to 25 years for aggravated home invasion and aggravated carjacking. The children's court maximum for a single offence is three years.
• The changes would lift the maximum sentence for aggravated home invasion and carjacking from 25 years to life imprisonment for anyone 14 years and over.
• The five offences are aggravated home invasion, home invasion, intentionally causing injury in circumstances of gross violence (including machete crime), recklessly causing injury in circumstances of gross violence (including machete crime) and aggravated carjacking.
• Carjacking will also be heard in the county court by default unless there are "substantial and compelling reasons" for a matter to stay in the children's court.
• Aggravated burglary and armed robbery, if "serious and repeated", will also be moved to the county court.
• The sentencing principles for judges will be overhauled to ensure community safety is prioritised, that they consider the impact of a child's alleged offending on the victim and remove the rule that prison is a "last resort" for child offenders.
That “someone” was the state’s police and crime prevention minister, Anthony Carbines, not the head of a not-for-profit, or a lawyer, or a Greens MP. The comments were made during his second reading speech for the bill about changing the age.
“Community safety is best served through prioritising diversion wherever possible and appropriate, and targeting intensive interventions to children and young people who are most likely to offend seriously and repeatedly,” Carbines continued.
“Lasting results are only achieved by addressing the underlying causes of offending and tailoring interventions based on risks and needs.”
The other laws Labor trumpeted this week were about “targeting the evil adult puppet-masters pulling the strings” behind youths committing crime, according to exclusive comments by the premier, Jacinta Allan, in the Herald Sun.
But the government has already played this tune. Back in 2017, while some of those who now face jail time were starting primary school, the so-called “Fagin’s law” to apparently prevent this very thing was passed. This is a reheated announcement made at a time when Melbourne is increasingly spoken about like Dickensian London.
In 2010, the last time the Coalition won a Victorian election, it was in no small part due to a promise to install protective services officers – armed guards – on every metropolitan train station at night.
Never mind that the actual number of violent crimes at stations was not that high; if you ever felt unsafe at night waiting for a train – and most of us have – this was the answer.
Every election since, the Victorian Coalition has thrashed about looking for a policy that would similarly cut through. None have come, though not for want of trying; during the 2018 campaign, it even tossed around the idea of trying to give itself the power to sack magistrates who handed down light sentences.
This is increasingly the place of state and territory conservative parties in opposition and trying to win government: focus on crime, and crime alone, and hope voters see them as knights in shining armour.
If it works, and they are voted in, these parties can rightly claim a mandate for their harsh policies.
The Victorian government can make no such claim, changing tack so markedly during its term. It is following the Queensland LNP playbook for how to win government, while it is in government.
There is little to suggest this was in any way thought through. Labor has printed promotional material with its “adult time for serious crime” slogan, but hasn’t actually written the laws. The first many in cabinet reportedly heard about it was when they were sent the proposal an hour before a meeting. It is policy by polling, law formed by focus group.
It is important to note there is a restlessness in the state, and people want answers. Seemingly everyone knows someone who is a victim of crime, and footage of the latest home invasion or carjacking or murder is only a click away.
There is a greater sense of disorder that is pervasive too, particularly in Melbourne. Public drug-taking or defecating, people in the grips of mental ill-health, even empty shops: all of this makes people feel less safe, though it may not result in a criminal charge.
People are angry; MPs emailed by constituents about violent crimes in their suburbs can attest to that.
Allan started her press conference on Wednesday to announce the new laws by reading from such an email. It was from a family who intervened when a 16-year-old broke into their neighbour’s house, leaving the husband stabbed three times, and a son who can no longer sleep at night, fearful that every noise is another offender.
But political leadership is not taking a wild swing and hoping it connects: it is looking people in the face, telling them you have heard them and explaining how you will make it right – even if they don’t like the answer.
• Nino Bucci is justice and courts reporter at Guardian Australia
