On Tuesday March 26, young people in Alice Springs rioted following the death of an 18-year-old man, Kumanjayi Petrick, in a car crash on March 8. A youth curfew followed, but the prevalence of youth crime and social insecurity in Alice Springs is not new and cannot be resolved through the action taken by state authorities. Long-term action must involve community leaders cooperating with police on intervention programs to improve community perception of state authorities and establish sustainable and respectful methods of crime prevention. However, there remains a great deal of obscurity around the patterns and prevalence of youth violence — worsened by convoluted and reductive media narratives — so the complex situation cannot be addressed without understanding the existing conditions.
In what media outlets have labelled a “kneejerk reaction”, the government’s response to the crisis with a curfew has raised questions over the legality and efficacy of temporary measures of control. The significant increase in the presence of armed police officers creates an intimidating and oppressing environment in the community. In an interview with the Guardian in 2023, Warlpiri elders from the Yuendumu community stated that the presence of officers in remote communities was a “direct threat” to the community. Ned Jampijinpa Hargraves, a senior elder, said to the Guardian that “More funding for police means more police violence against our people.”
Other news outlets including The Sydney Morning Herald and The Guardian have been brushing over this crisis without considering the implications of a blanket curfew, with the National Indigenous Times citing “punitive measures such as curfews and increased police numbers often fail to address root causes of crime and instead funnel more people into the criminal justice system.” Despite many outlets covering the riot and curfew, they have done so in little detail and without analysing the underlying issues facing the community which have contributed to this crisis including youth incarceration and a lack of resources allocated to communities. The Australian, for instance, reported on April 28 “Prime minister Anthony Albanese to return to crime-ridden Alice Springs,” an article which placed emphasis on a list of crimes in the community without explaining why such crimes are so prevalent, dismissing Alice Springs as “crime-ridden.” The Northern Territory government Youth Detention Census reported that the number of youths in detention during the second quarter of 2023-24 included 66 people on remand and 52 sentenced. The curfew briefly stopped youth crime, but it did not involve community consultation. Nick Espie from the Human Rights Law Centre said to SBS that “for many Aboriginal people, there’s an inherent fear and apprehension when it comes to police… And this is what happens if we continue to only utilise police as the face of any response to the community safety issues. We can’t just arrest our way out of any sort of social crisis.”
The high number of youths in detention is due in part to the low age of criminal responsibility, which is currently 12 years old. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 2022-2023 there were 754 youth offenders in the Northern Territory aged 10 to 17. A campaign called #RaiseTheAge formed in 2020 enlisted thousands of supporters to petition the government, which culminated in a 2023 legislation to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12. The campaign stated on their website that “locking away young children and removing them from their communities and families only does more damage.”
The Australian Institute of Criminology produced a Northern Territory Safe Streets Audit which investigated crime and safety concerns in urban communities. The report found that effective interventions to youth crime involved early schemes aimed at parents and young children, diversionary programs for at-risk youths, and programs that involved Indigenous elders which were sensitive to Indigenous traditions and value systems, and specific to the needs of the youths participating in the programs. It also highlighted the importance of community involvement in early intervention programs and co-operation of police and communities when responding to crime and violence.
The curfew was put in place from March 27 to April 10, so that everyone under 18 was not permitted to be out without valid reason between 6pm-6am in the “high risk area” in the CBD and surrounding precinct. 58 additional police officers from throughout the NT were deployed in the CBD area, to enforce the curfew and to be “highly visible… to make this behaviour stop, or avoid it happening,” according to NT Police Commissioner Michael Murphy.
The curfew reinforces a system of continuous punishment: rather than co-operating with community leaders to improve rehabilitation programs, it restricts freedom of movement for young people and deepens the already fractured relationship between young people and the justice system. It doesn’t provide long-term solutions to crime or violence, and does not prioritise protecting children. Such measures cannot sustain communities or resolve the underlying causes of community insecurity.