Australia’s youth justice crisis needs national leadership. The Senate inquiry is helpful but isn’t enough

At a time when youth justice policy across Australia has taken an increasingly punitive turn, a federal Senate inquiry has laid out the evidence for a different path. It stopped short, however, of recommending the range of reforms needed.

Released on Friday, the inquiry into Australia’s youth justice and incarceration system has been almost two years in the making. After the 2025 federal election interrupted the original inquiry, it was re-established in October 2025.

It examined:

• the impacts of youth incarceration
• the profound over-incarceration of First Nations children
• Australia’s compliance with children’s human rights, and
• the case for enforceable national minimum standards.

The committee received 350 submissions and held nine public hearings. It heard from legal, health, education and youth justice experts, First Nations organisations, commissioners, researchers, advocates and front-line services. Importantly, it also heard from young people with experiences of the youth justice system.

What the Senate inquiry found

The findings paint a confronting picture of Australian youth justice systems. It found the current approach is expensive, fails to adequately address the underlying causes of offending and is associated with high rates of re-offending.

Children who enter these systems are disproportionately experiencing significant disadvantage, trauma and unmet needs. This includes poverty, family violence, child sexual abuse, homelessness, educational disengagement, mental ill health and disability.

Nationally, 65% of young people under youth justice supervision in 2022-23 had interacted with the child protection system during the previous decade.

Detention risks further compounding the conditions associated with offending. It can disrupt education, and separate children from family, community and culture. It can also exacerbate trauma, mental ill health and disability.

The over-incarceration of First Nations children emerged as one of the report’s starkest findings. The inquiry received data showing First Nations children were 24 times more likely than non-Indigenous children to be detained. Almost four in five First Nations children in detention had yet to be sentenced.

A call for national leadership and coordination

Youth justice systems are primarily administered by states and territories. The committee found significant differences in the laws, protections and treatment experienced by children depending on where they live. It described the current approach as “fragmented and inconsistent”.

Yet, Australia has national and international obligations to protect children’s rights. These include the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and commitments through Closing the Gap to reduce First Nations over-incarceration.

Basic rights and protections should not depend on the state in which a child lives.

This is why the inquiry’s recommendations for greater national leadership are important. It calls on the federal attorney-general to work with states and territories to introduce national minimum standards for youth justice. It also calls for the establishment of a taskforce that encompasses justice, policing, education, health, disability, social and legal services, and employment.

The inquiry also recommends a national evidence-based public education campaign and a further Senate inquiry into the factors contributing to youth incarceration.

These are important recommendations. However, they fall short of the breadth of reform called for in the evidence available to the inquiry and reflected in the report’s findings.

The lack of ambitious reform agenda setting, including the failure to mandate a federal minimum age (14 years) of criminal responsibility, is recognised in additional comments made by some of the committee members.

The inadequacy of the current trajectory

The inquiry comes at a critical moment. Several states and territories have tightened bail laws, expanded punitive responses and wound back the principle that detention should be a last resort.

The report documents extremely high rates of young people returning to youth justice supervision after detention.

Youth detention is also extraordinarily expensive. According to the Productivity Commission, the average cost of detaining one young person was $3,625 per day, compared with $424 for community-based supervision.

The report points to an important disconnect between the public narrative of an escalating youth crime crisis and national trend data. Youth offending rates actually fell substantially across every state and territory between 2008 and 2023.

Read more: Is Australia in a youth crime crisis? Here’s what the numbers say

None of this diminishes the very real harm experienced by victims of crime. An effective response must be judged by whether it reduces future harm, not simply by whether it appears tough.

The inquiry heard extensive evidence supporting prevention, early intervention, diversion, rehabilitation and justice reinvestment. All come at a lower cost than incarceration and are more likely to increase community safety.

If the goal is fewer victims, less offending and safer communities, Australia cannot incarcerate its way out of the problem.

What must happen now

The value of this report will be determined by whether action follows. More than 100 recommendations from previous inquiries have yet to be implemented.

Action requires committed national leadership across justice, health, education, disability, child protection, housing and social services. These are the systems that encounter many of these children long before they come into contact with police, often after their own experiences of violence and abuse.

The evidence points to intervening earlier, addressing trauma and disadvantage, keeping children connected to family, culture and education, and reserving detention as a last resort. First Nations leadership and self-determination must also be embedded in any reform agenda.

States and territories must be willing to change direction – rapidly. A nationally coordinated reform agenda will mean little if jurisdictions continue to adopt punitive responses.

The test of this inquiry will come in the years ahead if fewer children enter the youth justice system, fewer return to it, and communities experience less offending and harm.