Juvenile Justice. Caging children while corporate criminals go free

In Australia, a ten-year-old boy could go to prison for shoplifting, while an executive involved in millions of dollars in bribes gets away with a fine. Aleta Moriarty with story.

On an average night in 2025, approximately 884 young people while in custody and for one year, 4,578 children passed through detention.

Meanwhile, David Savage, former COO of Leighton Holdings, fine ($) just $1,000 for his role in organizing what Australian Federal Police announced Australia’s longest-running corporate bribery investigation uncovered nearly $45 million in bribes to Iraqi politicians. But after admitting breaches of the Companies Act, he received a small fine and was able to retreat to his property in France.

Like Clancy Moore of Transparency International Australia He noted of such cases: “In almost 25 years, only seven individuals and three companies have been convicted of foreign bribery in Australia.”

The Iraqi middleman, who distributed some of the bribes he received over three years, remained in a prison in England. But it lacked the benefits of Australian corporate citizenship.

Foreign Bribery: Australia’s loss is America’s gain

UN Condemnation

lately, during Universal Periodic Review of the UN Human Rights CouncilAustralia has been urged by more than 40 countries to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14. Nationally, in all jurisdictions except the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory, young people can be charged with a criminal offense if they are 10 years of age or over.

Hugh de Kretser, President Australian Human Rights Commission, stated:

“Locking primary school-age children in prison harms them, disrupts their education and increases the risk of further offending. It is against medical advice and contrary to global human rights standards. This must change if we are to close the widening gap in Aboriginal over-incarceration.

“The Australian government can show national leadership and encourage states and territories to comply by increasing the minimum age of criminal responsibility in Commonwealth law to 14 years.”

Instead of heeding such advice, Australian states are stepping up in the opposite direction. Victoria’s “Adult Term for Violent Offenses” policy, announced in November 2025, will treat 14-year-olds as fully developed moral agents deserving of adult prison. potentially life imprisonment ($).

children imprisoned

The majority of young people in custody are not punished and are waiting for their court date; The average duration of detention without punishment is 6 days.

Productivity Commission report The annual cost to state taxpayers of incarcerating children exceeds $1 billion; Each detained child costs taxpayers $3,320 per day, or $1.212 million per child per year.

We can only imagine the different outcomes that could be achieved if this funding were directed to early interventions, social, therapeutic or educational resources. For example, research shows that more than 17% of incarcerated Indigenous Australians report those removed from their natural families, compared with 7% Among those who have never been to prison.

But this is not the case. What we do know is that juvenile detention is a revolving door.

The kids who go in almost never come out.

According to the data received Justice Reform Initiative, 84.5 percent of children released from custody return to supervision within 12 months.

Sentencing Council of Victoria The research found that children are much more likely to re-offend once they enter the youth justice system, and that children first convicted between the ages of 10 and 12 have an 86% re-offending rate within six years, more than double the rate for those first convicted at the age of 19-20.

A. 2025 UNSW survey A study of more than 1,500 justice-involved young people in NSW found that those incarcerated during adolescence Risk increased fivefold Incarceration as an adult compared to youth who were never detained.

First Nation children are overrepresented

The impact of this crisis on mass youth incarceration falls largely on our First Nations children. according to Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s 2024 Youth Detention reportFirst Nations youth accounted for 60% of all detained youth in the June quarter 2024,

Despite making up only 6.6% of the Australian population aged 10-17.

These are 27 times Non-Indigenous youth are just as likely to be detained. In the Northern Territory the situation reaches its extreme: 95% The children detained are Indigenous. Children aged 10-13 face the greatest inequality: First Nations children in this age group are incarcerated 45.5 times proportion of their non-Indigenous peers.

Source: aihw.gov.au

This incarceration rate has lifelong implications. Consider: according to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Performance FrameworkAbout 10% of Indigenous Australians aged 20-64 have a bachelor’s degree or above, while 35% of non-Indigenous adults have a bachelor’s degree. Now let’s put this against this: according BMC Public Healthapproximately 15% of Indigenous Australian men report being incarcerated at some point in their lives, with roughly 3% reporting being incarcerated at any given time. This shows that:

In Australia, an Indigenous man is much more likely to be imprisoned than one with a university education.

While all criminals are equal, some criminals are more equal. Nowhere have we seen the scales of justice tipped so quickly as in the release of the Epstein files, where we see scores of world leaders and business elites implicated in child trafficking and pedophile scandals, and many of whom remain uninvestigated, uncharged and untouched.

Epstein True Story | West Report

Practicing researcher in the field of human rights, disability inclusion and gender. He completed his doctorate at the University of Melbourne. Twenty years of working experience in organizations such as the United Nations, UN Women, the World Bank, and the University of Melbourne.