Warning: this article may be distressing to some readers, and makes reference to self-harm and child sexual abuse.
Australia's youth crime rates have fallen across every state and territory over the past two decades, a Senate inquiry has found, even as media coverage and political rhetoric continue to drive public perception of a "youth crime crisis."
The inquiry, tabled this week, examined the outcomes and impacts of youth incarceration across Australian jurisdictions, and included a focus on the over-representation of First Nations children in the justice system.
It found that sustained media reporting on youth offending has shaped public attitudes in ways that do not reflect the underlying data, and that this in turn has influenced government policy, pushing jurisdictions toward tougher, more punitive responses rather than approaches backed by evidence.
Nick Espie, Executive Director of the peak Indigenous legal body NATSILS, said the findings placed responsibility squarely on political leaders.
"The Prime Minister has an obligation and responsibility to act to end the youth justice crisis that is seeing our children locked up at unprecedented rates," Mr Espie said.
"States and territories across the country are doubling down on punitive policies that are driving the mass incarceration of our children. This not only harms them, it makes the community less safe."
Children's experiences in detention
The first of the report's four recommendations calls on the Attorney-General to work with state and territory counterparts to introduce national minimum standards for youth justice across the country, an attempt to end the patchwork of vastly different laws, ages of criminal responsibility and detention conditions that currently exist between jurisdictions.
The committee heard extensive evidence about the conditions children face in detention, including inadequate mental health care, prolonged isolation and physical environments the inquiry heard are unsafe and unsuited to housing young people.
Witnesses told the committee these conditions fall hardest on First Nations children, who make up the overwhelming majority of those held in detention nationally.
The report specifically points to the case of Cleveland Dodd, a 16-year-old Yamatji boy who took his own life while held in the Unit 18 youth detention facility at Casuarina Prison in Western Australia.
His death has become a national touchstone for advocates arguing that the current system is fundamentally unsafe for children.
The committee was told that police watchhouses lack the capacity and facilities to properly care for children, and "should never be used as an alternative to youth detention centres."
Recent reviews of watchhouses in Queensland and the Northern Territory have echoed that warning. In 2025, the Queensland Police Service itself found that watchhouse infrastructure across the state was "unsuitable and unsafe" for children.
Mr Espie said national standards could directly address these conditions.
"National minimum standards would be one key step towards fixing this crisis," he said.
"It could include a standard such as arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child should be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time."
Another recommendation calls on the federal government to run an education campaign providing the public with evidence-based information on youth crime, while highlighting the benefits that alternatives to incarceration can bring to community safety and wellbeing.
Who ends up in detention
Figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare cited in the report show 56 per cent of children under youth justice supervision (in community or in detention) are Indigenous. In detention specifically, that figure rises to 60 per cent.
The report finds these children are overwhelmingly likely to come from backgrounds of disadvantage, marginalisation and poverty: a third have a diagnosed mental health or behavioural disorder.
Among children under 14 in detention, 77 per cent were found to have unmet mental health, cognitive disability or other health needs that had gone unaddressed before their contact with the justice system.
Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe, speaking with NITV, said the treatment of such vulnerable of children while in custody had to be urgently addressed.
"We're talking about very young children being strip searched, and I've introduced a bill to end strip searching of children in this country," Senator Thorpe said.
"We're talking about children who may have come from a home where there may have been sexual abuse or sexual assault ... and then they're going into prison, child prisons, and being forcefully strip searched, where guards, male guards, are forcefully taking little girls' clothes off.
"Now, if that doesn't alarm anybody, then what does? Who is keeping our children safe? This is all children too, it's not just Aboriginal children."
The report also notes Australia is on track to miss Target 11 under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, which commits governments to cutting the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people aged 10 to 17 in detention by at least 30 per cent by 2031.
Its fourth recommendation calls for a further, dedicated inquiry, this time by the Senate Community Affairs References Committee, into the underlying factors driving youth incarceration in Australia, including access to health, education, disability, community, social and legal services.
A global spotlight
The findings land at an awkward moment for the federal government, which is currently campaigning for a seat on the United Nations Security Council while facing sustained criticism from UN bodies over the rate of Indigenous children in detention.
They also arrive just a week after Queensland introduced its so-called "circuit breaker" bill, further toughening youth justice laws in that state.
Queensland's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children's Commissioner, Sue-Anne Hunter, said the direction of these laws was undermining children's basic rights.
"The human rights of our children across this country are going backwards," Ms Hunter said. "It is worse in this state for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children because they are over-represented."
The Northern Territory government, which has faced sustained criticism from Indigenous organisations over its youth justice record, did not attend the committee's public hearings held in Darwin.
Mr Espie said advocates were now waiting to see how government would respond.
"We await a response from Government and welcome the opportunity to work with the Commonwealth, states and territories to work through what the minimum standards are," he said.
NITV has contacted the federal government for comment.
