scholarly journals Dealing With Radicalised Youth Offenders: The Development and Implementation of a Youth-Specific Framework

2022 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Barracosa ◽  
James March

Background: In 2018 in the Australian State of New South Wales, a specialist Countering Violent Extremism Unit was established in the youth criminal justice system. This was in direct response to a number of youth below the age of 18 who have been charged for terrorism offences and identified as involved in violent extremist acts. This youth-specific framework was the first of its kind in Australia. It was designed to provide multidisciplinary practitioner-based approaches for the early-identification, diversion, and disengagement of at-risk and radicalised youth offenders.Aims: This paper will explore the experiences and lessons learned by the Youth Justice New South Wales Countering Violent Extremism Unit. It will discuss the relevance of youth radicalisation within Australia's evolving national security climate. This includes emerging trends in relation to youth radicalisation to varied violent extremist ideologies. This paper will explore the specialist approach adopted for preventing and countering violent extremism through the identification, assessment, and case management of at-risk and radicalised youth offenders.Implications: The Youth Justice New South Wales experience indicates that youth criminal justice settings can be designed to tackle the challenges posed by at-risk and radicalised youth. The practitioner experience canvassed in this paper highlights that a pluralistic and non-punitive approach to supervision, client-focused assessment and case management processes, and widespread resourcing of multidisciplinary practitioners and programs can be used to account for developmental and psychosocial vulnerabilities in addition to violent extremism risk factors amongst youth offenders. These approaches should be supplemented by youth-specific countering violent extremism practitioner expertise, and a range of violent extremism case management and risk assessment measures.

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 170-179
Author(s):  
Jioji Ravulo

Pasifika Support Services (PSS) was a program managed by a nongovernment organization, Mission Australia, and funded by the New South Wales Premiers Office to meet the needs of young offenders from a Pacific background. PSS ran from June 2005 to June 2009 and implemented a cost-effective integrated case management model with the New South Wales Police Force adapted to address social risk factors specific to Pacific youth offenders and family support networks. Sixty young people were reviewed regarding the outcomes achieved through their participation, further supported by an evaluation carried out by an external evaluator who found that 65% of participants did not reoffend after 18 months of completing the program. An importance of developing a shared approach to employing a holistic and intensive model of case management that affects individual, community, and organizational change through culturally relevant processes and practices, paired with a cross institutional commitment underpins the various outcomes discussed.


Proceedings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Adrian Cherney

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of programs aimed at preventing radicalization and disengaging known violent extremists. Some programs have targeted individuals through the use of case management approaches and the development of individual intervention plans (e.g., the Desistance and Disengagement Program and the Channel program in the UK; the Australian New South Wales Corrections Proactive Integrated Support Model—PRISM—and state-based division initiatives in Australia). There is a broad consensus in the literature that the evaluation of such initiatives has been neglected. However, the evaluation of case-managed interventions to counter violent extremism (CVE) is challenging. They can have small caseloads which makes it difficult to have any comparison or control group. Client participation can vary over time, with no single intervention plan being alike. This can make it hard to untangle the relative influence of different components of the intervention on indicators of radicalization and disengagement. In this presentation, results from primary research that set out to evaluate case-managed CVE interventions in Australia and develop evaluation metrics are presented. This research involves the examination of interventions implemented by New South Wales corrections and state police. The effectiveness of these interventions was assessed against a five-point metric of client change. Client change overtime was analyzed using case note information collected by the various interventions on client participation. Results show that client change is not a linear process and that the longer an individual is engaged in a case-managed intervention, the more likely they are to demonstrate change relating to disengagement. Specific case studies are used to illustrate trajectories and turning points related to radicalization and to highlight the role of case-managed interventions in facilitating disengagement. Key elements of effective interventions include the provision of ongoing informal support. Investment in capturing case note information should be a priority of intervention providers. Different challenges confronted by case-managed CVE interventions are highlighted.


1983 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 47 ◽  
Author(s):  
PB Copley

Petrogale xanthopus still occurs over most of its former range in South Australia. It is widespread in the Flinders Ranges, where almost 200 colonies are now known, and is locally common in areas of both the Rinders Ranges and Olary Hills. Six colonies are currently known in the western Gawler Ranges with an outlying population on Carriewerloo Station only 50 km west of Port Augusta. Seven colonies have been found in the Olary Hills, to the north and north-west of Olary. The species has suffered a major decline in abundance since European settlement, having become extinct locally throughout this range. Hunting for skins, competition with introduced herbivores for food and shelter, and predation by foxes seem to be the main reasons for this decline. However, it is still not possible to say whether the species currently has a decreasing population and is at risk, is in equilibrium, or is increasing. Information published in this paper and current studies in South Australia and New South Wales should soon determine this.


1999 ◽  
Vol 69 (6) ◽  
pp. 227-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marita Lynagh ◽  
Jenny Knight ◽  
Margot J. Schofield ◽  
Lorraine Paras

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 241-255
Author(s):  
John T. Hunter ◽  
Eda Addicott

Aims: Ecosystems nationally at risk in Australia are listed under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Act (EPBC Act), and many cross State jurisdictional boundaries. The determination of these ecosystems across the State boundaries are based on expert knowledge. The International Vegetation Classification has the potential to be useful as a cross-jurisdictional hierarchy which also gives global perspective to ecosystems. Study Area: All bioregions that include Eucalyptus populnea as a dominant or major component of woodlands across the species known distribution. Methods: We use plot-based data (455 plots) from two states (Queensland and New South Wales) in eastern Australia and quantitative classification methods to assess the definition and description for the Poplar Box Woodland ecosystem type (hereafter “ecological community” or “community”) that is listed as endangered under the EPBC Act. Analyses were conducted using kR-CLUSTER methods to generate alliances. Within these alliances, analyses were undertaken to define associations using agglomerative hierarchical clustering and similarity profile testing (SIMPROF). We then explore how assigning this community into the IVC hierarchy may provide a mechanism for linking Australian communities, defined at the association and alliance levels, to international communities at risk. Results: We define three alliances and 23 associations based on the results of floristic analysis. Using the standard rule-set of the IVC system, we found that the IVC hierarchy was a useful instrument in correlating ecological communities across jurisdictional boundaries where different classification systems are used. It is potentially important in giving a broader understanding of communities that may be at risk continentally and globally. Conclusions: We conclude that the IVC hierarchy can incorporate Australian communities at the association level into useful units at higher levels, and provides a useful classification tool for Australian ecosystems. Taxonomic reference: PlantNET (http://plantnet/10rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/) [accessed June 2019]. Abbreviations: EPBC Act = Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Act; IVC = International Vegetation Classification; NMDS = non-metric multidimensional scaling; NSW = New South Wales; PCT = Plant Community Type; QLD = Queensland; RE = Regional Vegetation Community; SIMPER = similarity percentage analysis; SIMPROF = Similarity profile analysis.


2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maggie Hall ◽  
Kate Rossmanith

This article examines the ways in which offenders are required to provide very particular accounts of themselves and to self-narrate in confined ways. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted in the New South Wales justice system, it explores how the stories that offenders are made to accept and tell about themselves often bear little relationship to their own reflections. It analyses how, despite the expectations of judges and prison authorities, these self-narratives are not products of an offender’s soul-searching concerning his past actions and experience; rather they are products of an official legal narrative being imposed on an offender whose capacity to own and enact such a narrative is already seriously compromised.


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