MEDIA RELEASE
Monday 10 February 2025
The NSW Government has announced it will extend its failing child bail laws, ensuring communities become more dangerous for years to come.
"Bad policy is easy to print in a tabloid, but impossible to implement safely and impossible to undo in a child’s life,” Karly Warner, CEO of the Aboriginal Legal Service (NSW/ACT) Limited said.
“While we welcome all additional investment in under-serviced communities, if the Premier continues to enact laws that are proven to increase crime instead of keeping kids out of the criminal justice system, this positive step forward will be undone with several steps backwards.
“The Premier must answer this question: is your objective to reduce crime or to improve headlines? We appeal to Premier Minns to deliver good government guided by evidence.
“Increasing child imprisonment has not only failed to reduce crime, but is putting another generation of children into an express training program for a life of crime and suffering.
“Locking kids up has never worked, anywhere. Yet at a time when families are struggling under the cost of living crisis, the NSW Government is costing taxpayers millions in with its failed bail laws and law-and-order rhetoric.”
Spending on child prisons in Australia has increased for the ninth consecutive year. New Productivity Commission data shows that the cost of imprisoning children exceeded $1 billion in 2023-24, almost double the costs in 2015. In NSW, the cost of imprisoning a child is over $2,700 per day.1
“Aboriginal children make up 88% of children captured by the legislation, and 90% of children imprisoned under the new bail laws. Despite promises to do things differently under Closing the Gap, Aboriginal children are being sacrificed to the Premier’s tough-on-crime political agenda in a race to the bottom the Labor government can never win,” Ms Warner said.
“Instead of doubling down on past mistakes, we urge the Premier to heed the evidence and strengthen the solutions that actually work to prevent crime in the first place:
- long-term and sustainable funding for Aboriginal community-controlled organisations to provide vital services to children and families;
- strengthen diversion and invest in community-led alternatives to criminal justice responses, like alternative responders;
- meaningful partnerships between Aboriginal communities, police and other justice stakeholders to respond to local needs and keep all members of our communities safe.”
ENDS
Media contact: Alyssa Robinson [email protected] 0427 346 017
[1] Productivity Commission, Report on Government Services 2025; New South Wales Legislative Council, House Business Papers, 965 - Youth Justice - AVERAGE COST PER DAY - CUSTODY IN YOUTH JUSTICE CENTRE
