The Herald Sun, 26 December 2025

With an election less than a year away, the Allan government wants you to believe the answer to youth crime is to get tougher.

It’s pulled together a quick fix, walking the same pre-election path Queensland took with “adult crime, adult time” that makes the prospect of life imprisonment a reality for 14-year-olds.

Here’s the truth most politicians don’t tell you: there is no credible evidence that harsher sentences for children reduce crime. None.

Decades of research say the opposite: the younger a child enters prison, the more likely they are to reoffend.

Around 85 per cent of children released from sentenced youth detention in Australia return within a year.

If this was a hospital and 85 per cent of patients came back sicker, we would shut it down. Instead, we are expanding youth detention while early intervention and support remain chronically under-resourced.

Victorians deserve more than recycled rhetoric or a borrowed political playbook. If this government is serious about finding a Victorian solution, it must look at the evidence of what will prevent crime and make communities safer, not reach for slogans crafted to win votes.

The Violence Reduction Unit announced last month as following the lead of Scotland is welcome, but misleading in the context of Victoria’s harsh punitive justice measures that are not based on evidence.

Have they actually read what is happening over there in Scotland?

The Scottish Violence Reduction Unit is not a stand-alone program, but is just one part of Scotland’s “whole system approach” that embeds children’s rights across justice, education, health and child protection systems. Scotland has passed laws to end the incarceration of children in the justice system.

Bruce Adamson was Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People from 2017 to 2023.Adamson explains: “Where children are a danger to themselves or others, they are kept safe in secure units within our welfare system, not the justice system.

“The Scottish approach to violence reduction and harmful behaviour by children is rights-based. It focuses on early intervention, diversion from adult courts, keeping children out of the justice system, and addressing welfare needs through multi-agency partnerships. It bears no resemblance to the ‘adult time for violent crime’ policy in Victoria.”

To understand the harm of Victoria’s punitive policy, we need to look at who these children are.

The Victorian Youth Parole Board highlights that among children in custody in 2021, 72 per cent had experienced abuse, trauma or neglect, 55 per cent had been on child protection orders, 50 per cent had experienced family violence, 62 per cent had diagnosed mental health conditions, 87 per cent had histories of drug use, and nearly a third had cognitive disabilities.

In my role as National Children’s Commissioner, I witnessed the harms first-hand and heard from more than 150 children and young people I spoke with in the justice system — many in detention. Many children told me “we need help … … way earlier”. ‘Help Way Earlier!’ became the title of my report tabled in the Australian parliament in 2024.

We all want safer communities, and to achieve that we need to change our approach to the problem.

The evidence shows that crime by children is a symptom of their unmet needs and underlying issues that we are failing to address.

The children who most need help are unable to get it because the upstream systems such as health and education are not fit-for-purpose.

Victorians deserve better. They need solutions grounded in evidence and focused on preventing harm before it happens.

If the Victorian government is serious about making communities safer, the evidence on what to do is clear.

Act much earlier to address the unmet needs of children in vulnerable circumstances.

That’s what Scotland is doing with its “whole system approach”.

Genuine evidence-based reform does not easily translate to an election slogan, but a serious government will do the right thing, based on evidence, for the whole community, including for our youngest and most vulnerable citizens.

Anne Hollonds was Australia’s National Children’s Commissioner from 2020 to 2025, and is a spokesman for the Justice Reform Initiative.