NT Government 'fed up' with recent crime spike, seeks tougher laws for young property offenders
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As the Northern Territory grapples with an increase in property crime, the Government has announced it will seek to pass legislation on urgency so GPS tracking ankle bracelets can be used to prevent offenders committing crimes while released on bail.
Chief Minister Michael Gunner on Wednesday announced the move, saying "like the community, I am fed up with this recent spike in crime".
"Territorians have a right to feel safe at work, at home, and we feel and share the frustration and anger a lot in the Territory have at the moment," he said.
"We recognise as a government we have to act and act urgently on the situation that we have; we've got to make sure victims are front and centre and their voices are being heard, and that we are taking a tough and smart approach to making sure there's early intervention and prevention."
He said police research showed location monitoring did affect behaviour.
He also said tackling youth crime and the treatment of young people in detention, such as Darwin's Don Dale youth detention scandal which led to a royal commission, were part of the same problem.
"The treating of kids as adult offenders (creates) adult offenders," Mr Gunner said.
"If we want to break the cycle and reduce offending in the NT we have to be tough and smart about how we approach it; it's all for me one big policy problem for the NT, we have to start to get earlier intervention … to make sure we stop crime before it occurs."
'Repeat offenders behind most property crime'
There has been a 20 per cent increase in breach of bail offences by young people over the past two years, NT Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said.
"This will encourage positive behaviour ... peer pressure plays a great role in young offenders going out and offending," he said.
"We know these devices actually discourage that offending by saying they have GPS tracking that can track them 24 hours a day."
He said the law would be "applied appropriately" and that each offender would be assessed to determine whether they qualify for the monitoring bracelets.
"We're going to prevent the escalation of those offenders becoming repeat offenders," he said.
Commissioner Kershaw said 55 per cent of property crime in the NT was committed by youth, and about a third of overall crime involved a youth offender.
"Repeat offending is a core issue for us and that's why these tools, in particular GPS will prevent those repeat offenders, because they're the ones that are committing the majority of offences," he said.
Night of crime in the NT
Overnight on Tuesday, two primary schools and a church in Palmerston were broken into, and NT Police believe young offenders are behind it.
This brings the total number of schools broken into since the start of the school year to nine, NT Education Department deputy chief executive Marion Guppy said.
"It's really just senseless," she said.
The window to the St Luke's Anglican Church was smashed and a fire extinguisher was discharged, draws were opened and their contents strewn about.
Volunteers who were cleaning up there said they could not afford to upgrade their security.
There was similar damage to the Moulden Primary School and Good Shepard Lutheran School, and police said CCTV footage in the area showed six to eight youths running from one school to the other.
The victims agreed that judging by the damage and what was taken, it was likely the group was on the hunt for cash.
Topics: crime, crime-prevention, police, youth, nt
