Youth justice advocate rallies against ‘adult crime, adult time’ laws called into question by

A youth justice advocate has pleaded for state governments to avoid imprisoning youth criminals in order to stop future offending .

Executive Director of the Justice Reform Initiative Mindy Sotiri appeared on Sunrise on Monday to address the NSW Government attempts to introduce “adult crime, adult time” laws to quash a wave of gang-related youth crime.

WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Youth advocates oppose harsher gang crime penalties

NSW Premier Chris Minns announced youth offenders could face adult penalties if convicted of violent offences in organised crime cases after police revealed teenagers were being hired to carry out serious crimes, such as gangland hits.

But Sotiri told Sunrise such a harsh approach only kicks the proverbial can further down the road and doesn’t stop children from falling into a life of crime.

“I think we have to take crime seriously, and there is no doubt that there is some very serious offending happening,” she said.

“Prison does not work when it comes to addressing the drivers of why it is that people are committing crime in the first place, especially when it comes to children and young people.

“It’s not working to address the drivers of crime, it’s not working to rehabilitate and it’s certainly not working to keep the community safe.”

Minns is follow in the footsteps of Queensland Premier David Crisafulli, who introduced “adult crime, adult time” legislation , which sets mandatory prison sentences for certain crimes regardless of an offender’s age.

Crisafulli has lauded the results of the legislation and has proposed expanding on them to include the toughest bail laws in the country .

However, Sotiri said various international studies suggest the more interactions someone has with the justice system, the more likely they are to re-offend.

“If you think about kids and what it means to lock a child up at a very significant developmental age, what we can see is that they end up hanging out with other people that are in the same situation,” she said.

“They don’t have access to education a lot of the time, they don’t have access to communities and families.

“The evidence shows that prison is not the place to resolve those issues that really explain why it is that so many people are committing crime in the first place.”