Youth Justice in South Australia

The Adelaide Youth Training Centre-Kurlana Tapa

On an average night in SA currently about 20 young Aboriginal people aged between 12 and 19 are in youth detention at Kurlana Tapa.

Aboriginal kids make up over 50% of all those detained (20 of 38.)

Each year, over 600 children go through the detention centre, indicating that many young people have very short stays inside.

Currently, there are about 100 Aboriginal children across the state under Supervision Orders in South Australia.

In 2023-24, SA spent $49 million on youth-detention-based services and $6.4 million on community-based services.

In early 2025, SA completed a $22 million upgrade for a new 12-bed unit at the Adelaide Youth Detention Centre. The unit reportedly has a ‘therapeutic and trauma-informed design.’

Nationally, First Nations kids are currently 26 times more likely to go into juvenile detention

Three quarters of detained children are unsentenced. This means they have not been convicted of a crime. Many are place in detention because they do not have a safe place to stay on bail in community.

Over 80% of children aged 10-13 year in detention are First Nations kids.

The average cost per day of a young person in detention is now over $4,000 per day. This amounts to annual expenditure of over $1 million per year per detention bed.

Disability Needs

In 2020 a SA Disability Screening Assessment Project identified new disability-related needs in 53% of all children in detention.

National research recommends that all children in detention need detailed neurocognitive assessment because of the very high rates of unrecognised cognitive impairment for this group of young people.

Raising the Minimum Age of Criminal Responsibility (MACR) in South Australia

The Minimum Age of Criminal Responsibility refers to the age at which a child can be held legally responsible for committing a crime.

The number of young children in SA aged 10-13 who have been identified as repeat offenders with multiple charges over the past 5 years comprises 12 children aged 13 years and 2 children aged 12 years. This number includes all Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children.

In 2023 the SA government issued a Discussion Paper on raising the MACR to 14 years. This age is in line with international standards on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This process has now stalled since January 2024.

Reforming Youth Justice.

The Help Way Earlier report delivered by the National Children’s Commissioner, Anne Hollands in June 24 provides a detailed assessment of Youth Justice in Australia and offers a national child rights-based approach to reform.

Many of the recommendations for First Nations people relate to Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations being supported and resourced to take the lead on prevention and evidenced-based diversionary programs, as well as culturally appropriate restorative justice practices.

What can these programs look like?

Internationally, there are highly successful models of practice that have achieved remarkable outcomes for young people. One such model is the Spanish Diagrama model. Youth justice facilities are run by Non-government organisations (NGOs) located close to local community. Over the past twenty years the facilities have achieved recidivism (return to Youth Justice supervision) rates of less than 20% compared to close to 80% for Aboriginal young people leaving detention in Australia.

The model works well with serious repeat offenders.

The Diagrama model was first considered in Australia in the Northern Territory in 2018. A model specifically adapted to transform the Northern Territory’s youth justice practice was developed and outlined in a Blueprint for Change.

The Diagrama approach is drawing increasing interest across Australia.

An example is the advocacy of JusticeHub, a service seeking to share stories and to scale innovative solutions to transform the youth justice space in Australia.

Justice Hub outlines some of the features of the Diagrama model:

• rehabilitation and reintegration, not punishment and detention

• a strong foundation in mental health and education

• focus on building relationships-educators and skills-based workers offering personalised therapeutic support. There are few guards and they are in the background.

• re-integration safely into community starts while in detention

• young people return home better, not broken

• costs are about A$110,000 per year, rather than over A$1,000,000 per year in Australia.

Approaches like this show us what is possible if we are bold enough to re-imagine how we do youth justice.

There’s every reason to believe that if our SA government got behind this, our Aboriginal communities could transform youth justice outcomes in this state.

Safer happier communities, safer happier young people.