The Australian Human Rights Commission told a conference in Sydney recently that Australia's current way of dealing with Indigenous young offenders is not working and it's time to take a whole new approach. In particular, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma suggested the Justice Reinvestment Model as a model that was working overseas.

Key Points:

• The Indigenous juvenile detention rate has risen 27% nationally between 2001 to 2007.
• Indigenous young people are 28 times more likely to be detained than non-Indigenous young people.
• the justice reinvestment program is slowly reducing prison rates and balancing government budgets in places like Texas, Kansas and the United Kingdom.
• Justice reinvestment still retains detention as a measure of last resort for dangerous and serious offenders, but actively shifts the culture away from imprisonment. Instead of imprisoning people, it provides community-wide services that will actually prevent offending.
• Justice reinvestment recognises that most offenders come from a small number of disadvantaged communities and it redirects money into crime prevention and community services in those communities.

Further information about the justice reinvestment model can be found at http://www.justicereinvestment.org/.

Source: Australian Human Rights Commission