YANQ and Australia's poetry slam champion, Luka Lesson, have teamed up in 2012 to tackle the ongoing outrage of 17 year olds in adult prisons. Luka has been creating a spoken word piece, 17, to ignite the campaign this year, and has been blogging about the process so far at http://lukalesson.com/. We're super excited about its release during the Brisbane leg of the “Please Resist Me” Poetry Slam Tour on Sunday February 26, 2012, and hope you can come along!

Locking up 17 year olds in prison violates the United Nations bill, ratified by the Australian Government, that states eighteen should be the legal age of adult imprisonment. Queensland’s own Anti-descrimination Commissioner has condemned the current state of affairs, as has the Children’s Commissioner and The Queensland Law Society. How can we be doing this to our children?

Find out more about the YANQ's Stop Locking Up Children in Queensland's Adult Prisons campaign here, or get active and download our campaign resource kit! You can also call YANQ to see how your organisation can get involved by calling 07 3844 7713.

Queensland is the only State in Australia that locks up 17 year olds in adult (rather than juvenile) prisons. This is a human rights abuse, going against the United National bill, as ratified by the Australian Government, that eighteen should be the legal age of adult imprisonment. This also goes against Queensland's own anti-discrimination commission, and the Children’s Commissioner and The Queensland Law Society.

How long will we stand back and watch this happen? YANQ has been working for over a decade against this state of affairs, and we need your help in our campaign to stop the Queensland Government locking up children in adult prisons.

After 15 years of inaction, it is time to STOP locking up children in Queensland's Adult prisons and time for the Juvenile Justice system to include 17 year olds.

Download our campaign kit for more information and how to act now!

You can read the full paper here.

Responding to juvenile offending is a unique policy and practice challenge. While a substantial proportion of crime is perpetuated by juveniles, most juveniles will 'grow out' of offending and adopt law-abiding lifestyles as they mature. This paper outlines the factors (biological, psychological and social) that make juvenile offenders different from adult offenders and that necessitate unique responses to juvenile crime. It is argued that a range of factors, including juveniles' lack of maturity, propensity to take risks and susceptibility to peer influence, as well as intellectual disability, mental illness and victimisation, increase juveniles' risks of contact with the criminal justice system. These factors, combined with juveniles' unique capacity to be rehabilitated, can require intensive and often expensive interventions by the juvenile justice system. Although juvenile offenders are highly diverse, and this diversity should be considered in any response to juvenile crime, a number of key strategies exist in Australia to respond effectively to juvenile crime. These are described in this paper.

The Committee on the Rights of the Child has sent a list of questions to the Australian Government in the lead up to the Government's sitting with the Committee in May 2012.

In early October a delegation of Australian NGOs met with the Committee before this document was developed. It was a really successful meeting. In particular, it was the first time the Committee heard directly from children and young people in Australia.

One of the questions posed by the UN Committee to Australian Government relates to the imprisonment of children in adult jails in Queensland. The committee has specifically asked the Australian Government to outline:

b) Measures to ensure that children in a detention situation are accommodated in child-appropriate facilities that are separated from adult detainees.

Today the ABC aired a special report on 17 year olds in prison, which begins "On any one day in Australia a thousand young people are behind bars. In most states and territories, young criminals are dealt with under the juvenile justice system until they turn 18. But not in Queensland where many 17-year-olds are serving time in adult jails. Seventeen years ago the State Government promised to change the outdated law but youth advocates are still campaigning for that to happen."

This is a significant media report into 17 year olds in prison.  YANQ's director, Siyavash Doostkhah, is interviewed to represent YANQ's perspective on the rights and safety of young people in detention.   Karen Struthers, Minister for Community Services in Queensland, also contributes to the discussion, along with solicitor Damien Bartholemew and Debbie Kilroy of Sisters Inside.  Listen to this report, or read the full transcript, here.

In this editorial piece the New York Times argues that: "The United States made a disastrous miscalculation when it started automatically trying youthful offenders as adults instead of handling them through the juvenile courts."

Read the full story online at the New York Times website.

Jailing young people in ever larger numbers is not the answer to tackling youth crime according to a professor from the London School of Economics.

In a recent opinion piece in the UK's Guardian newspaper, Prof. Rod Morgan argues that the costs of jailing more and more young offendors are far too high.

The article is available online at http://society.guardian.co.uk/youthjustice/comment/0,,2016087,00.html.