24 October 2024
Economic Justice Australia (EJA) has expressed urgent concern about the number of children being released from detention without social security payments reinstated, exacerbating existing poverty and putting them at risk of recidivism. The Government is setting people up to fail as children and their families wait months to have payments reinstated after a child is held in remand – not even necessarily charged.
As part of its Remote Access Project, EJA interviewed more than 100 service providers in regional, rural, remote and very remote Australia. These service providers frequently reported that people in their communities are being released from prison and places of detention without access to their social security entitlements, and no prospect of immediate payment.
In one case, an EJA member centre assisted a young person who had been remanded in custody at a Northern Territory detention centre for one night only. Upon release to their elderly carer, who had previously been receiving the Family Tax Benefit, it took more than two months to reinstate the payment – even with the assistance of social workers and lawyers from the centre. The carer attended their local service centre three times and Services Australia would not accept the official bail paperwork. This left the carer supporting the young person on bail without any financial assistance during this period.
Delays and difficulties in accessing social security entitlements are having severe impacts on children across the country – but it is particularly concerning given the lowered age of criminal responsibility has become a political issue in both the Northern Territory and Queensland, which will only lead to higher numbers of young people being incarcerated.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), 4,542 children across Australia were under youth justice supervision in 2022-23.
The Australian Human Rights Commission has previously observed that “the children who come into contact with Australia’s justice systems are living with poverty, insecure housing, domestic, family and sexual violence, health and mental health problems, disabilities, systemic racism and intergenerational trauma,” and that “if vulnerable children are given the necessary support – earlier in the community, while in detention, and when released from detention – they are less likely to get involved in criminal activity, keeping them and our communities safe.”
This plays out in the data, with the ABS having found that children from the lowest socioeconomic areas are seven times more likely to be under supervision than children from the highest socioeconomic areas.
“If poverty and the various iterations of trauma and instability are key factors in people entering the criminal justice system, it only makes sense that a lack of adequate support upon leaving detention will reinforce the cycle of imprisonment and trauma,” says EJA CEO Kate Allingham.
“Our research has found a lack of any standardised process for notifying Services Australia of when a person is released from prison. Our member centres frequently see cases where official release documentation is rejected by Services Australia as insufficient proof to confirm release dates and reinstate payments. Even in cases where the system ‘works’, systemic delays in having payments reinstated see already vulnerable people leaving detention without any means of financial support.
“If young people are offending as a result of poverty, and they are spat back out into the world without even the meagre support afforded by social security, then the choices presented to them as a means of survival are extremely limited. This is a problem with the system, not with the children,” says Ms Allingham.
EJA calls for a thorough investigation into the systemic failures in providing timely access to social security for young people released from custody, with specific regard to Australia’s obligations under the international human rights framework.
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Media contact: Kirsty Sier | 0435 075 085 | kirsty@ejaustralia.org.au