Speaker 1: I'm Andrew Rule is his life in crimes Now. We
Speaker 1: tackled the thorny issue of youth crime recently, but since
Speaker 1: then this topic has absolutely taken off. In my colleague
Speaker 1: SHENNONDERI unearthed excellent new figures which show that youth crime
Speaker 1: in Victoria has exploded. It's gone up one thousand percent
Speaker 1: in a decade, and so the precise figures of these.
Speaker 1: In the year twenty fifteen there were only one hundred
Speaker 1: and nineteen youth crime offenders or offenses, and that figure
Speaker 1: in the most recent financial year had leapt to twelve
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty, so just over one hundred to just
Speaker 1: over twelve hundred, an amazing leap. We could all see
Speaker 1: it coming. But the authorities and the officials, the apologistsandemic lawyers,
Speaker 1: the senior police who were trying to massage the message
Speaker 1: for politicians, they didn't really want to acknowledge it. They
Speaker 1: wanted to say nothing to see here, this is not
Speaker 1: a big deal. This is all about perspective and statistics
Speaker 1: and this and that and the other thing. But the
Speaker 1: brutal raw facts cannot be hidden anymore. And we know
Speaker 1: that people who as recently as twenty eighteen or even later,
Speaker 1: were pooh poohing the idea of youth gangs and youth
Speaker 1: ethnic gangs and all the rest of it are now
Speaker 1: either acknowledging they were wrong, or they have fallen silent.
Speaker 1: They are saying nothing because the writing's on the wall.
Speaker 1: And it struck me this week while I was away
Speaker 1: in rural Victoria looking for the property the country high
Speaker 1: away of an old murderer. Incidentally, it struck me while
Speaker 1: I was driving back to Melbourne from the Country that
Speaker 1: every phone call that I received while I was driving,
Speaker 1: the person I spoke to, and these are all different people,
Speaker 1: and I did not instigate the subject of conversation. It
Speaker 1: just came up. Each person I spoke to in a
Speaker 1: couple of hours brought up youth crime. And one guy,
Speaker 1: ex detective, he said to me, all these young people
Speaker 1: that were gathered at this demonstration in South Bank, you
Speaker 1: know many of them were young, not all, but many
Speaker 1: of them were young, and their lack of respect for
Speaker 1: authority and for the police and for the community stands out.
Speaker 1: They just don't care. And that is the same attitude
Speaker 1: that we see in youth offenders. We see it with
Speaker 1: the Eggbergs. We see it with the people who steal cars.
Speaker 1: They break into your house with or without weapons, then
Speaker 1: they take your keys, then they take your car. Then
Speaker 1: they drive far because they'd lunatics and just want to
Speaker 1: have the thrills. And of course sometimes they run into
Speaker 1: innocent people and kill them. He just made that point
Speaker 1: about that. The next conversation I had within twenty minutes
Speaker 1: was with another caller who mentioned that someone they knew,
Speaker 1: a relative or a friend, it doesn't matter. Someone they
Speaker 1: knew had been drugged and mugged in the inner suburbs.
Speaker 1: They'd been slipped some sort of drug which knocked them out,
Speaker 1: maybe in a drink, I think, and they woke up
Speaker 1: in a back lane uninjured, thank god. But their phone
Speaker 1: was gone, their sneakers were gone, and their wallet was gone,
Speaker 1: so their credit cards and everything was gone. So that
Speaker 1: person saw as a youth crime thing. People who steal
Speaker 1: sneakers are generally not you know, senior fifty year old criminals.
Speaker 1: It's the young brigade. And then I got another call,
Speaker 1: and this was from a woman who I'd arranged to
Speaker 1: meet and to interview about the pet Gill family, the
Speaker 1: notorious Pett and Girls, Cath pet and Gill, of course,
Speaker 1: is the mother of bad guys that were drug dealers
Speaker 1: and killers and thieves and all the rest of it.
Speaker 1: And I was to interview this woman about one of
Speaker 1: those children, one who went straight interestingly, and the lady
Speaker 1: rang up and was apologetic. He said, I can't meet
Speaker 1: you today or tomorrow. I'm sorry. I'm at the hospital.
Speaker 1: I said, oh, it's everything, okay. She said, I know.
Speaker 1: It's not me. It's my son. He's been stabbed. Now
Speaker 1: it turns out a son is an adult. He's not
Speaker 1: a youth who's been fighting in the street. He's someone
Speaker 1: in his thirties who's a social worker. And he's been
Speaker 1: stabbed by some mad kid, by some teenager, and he's
Speaker 1: in hospital and he ill survive, but it's sufficiently serious
Speaker 1: that he's been in hospital several days, and his mother
Speaker 1: he's visiting him because she's so concerned about him. That
Speaker 1: was the third conversation I had in the space of
Speaker 1: a couple of hours. Then I get to work, and
Speaker 1: I get to the Herald's son office and I go
Speaker 1: to my office and I'm sitting there working out what
Speaker 1: to do, and along comes one of my colleagues and
Speaker 1: she says, Oh, this is something you'd be interested in.
Speaker 1: I said, what's that and she said, well, a friend
Speaker 1: of mine is visiting Australia from England. He's doing the
Speaker 1: big tour of Australia. He saved up his money, he
Speaker 1: came out here recently and he bought a camp a
Speaker 1: van and he's doing the trip of a lifetime around Australia.
Speaker 1: And he thought it'd be great, and it was great
Speaker 1: until he parked and camped at a spot near Newcastle
Speaker 1: in New South Wales. Now this is not Victoria, but
Speaker 1: it's you know, Australia's East Coast is probably similar in
Speaker 1: many ways crime wise. And poor old mate from Yorkshire,
Speaker 1: I think he's from. He's asleep in his nice camper
Speaker 1: van that he bought and late at night, middle of
Speaker 1: the night, after midnight, bang bang bang, very rough knock
Speaker 1: and he thinks, oh, somebody's in trouble. They need help.
Speaker 1: And he opens the door and says, oh, can I
Speaker 1: help you, and three young men dragged him out at
Speaker 1: knife point or machete point, dragged him out of the
Speaker 1: car and said we're taking a van and he's just
Speaker 1: wearing a pair of jocks. And one of them said oh,
Speaker 1: let him put his jeans on and a jumper, but
Speaker 1: he was still barefoot. He put on his jeans and
Speaker 1: jump up, but was still barefoot. And they left him
Speaker 1: there in the middle of the night, out somewhere, you know,
Speaker 1: camping bush somewhere, and he had to go and find
Speaker 1: other campus, and they of course didn't want to help
Speaker 1: him because they were frightened that he was a bad guy.
Speaker 1: And the bad guys, the three took his van and
Speaker 1: they just trashed it. They drove it fast, then they
Speaker 1: smashed it, and then they trashed it and they just
Speaker 1: buged up his van. So this is the fourth conversation
Speaker 1: I've had in one day to people I know, none
Speaker 1: of whom know each other. And in each case they
Speaker 1: have brought up the subject. I haven't raised it with them.
Speaker 1: The fourth one, Oh God, there's a pattern here. The
Speaker 1: damn has burst. And I thought of that, Hemingway saying.
Speaker 1: Hemingway once said, you go broke slowly at first, and
Speaker 1: then you go broke all at once. And I think
Speaker 1: it's the same with this youth crime explosion. For years,
Speaker 1: it was building up for years. We could see it coming,
Speaker 1: and the naysayers said, oh, it's not that bad, it's
Speaker 1: not really happening much, etc. But all of a sudden
Speaker 1: the levee has burst and we're surrounded by it. That
Speaker 1: same day, same day, I'm thinking about this, and I'm
Speaker 1: thinking I should write something about this, because Shennondery's story
Speaker 1: with the statistics is being born out by personal experience.
Speaker 1: It seems everybody I know he's got a story to tell.
Speaker 1: And I ring an old friend of mine. He's by
Speaker 1: way of being a cartoonist, and I rang him and
Speaker 1: we had a chat about something, and he said, what
Speaker 1: are you doing? And I said, I'm thinking about writing
Speaker 1: something about youth crime, the rise in youth crime. He said, oh,
Speaker 1: tell me about it. I said what he said, Oh,
Speaker 1: I was in Williamstown the other day and I was
Speaker 1: in a store there and this bunch of kids, a
Speaker 1: bunch of teenagers they weal seen and just pick up
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff and then just brazenly steal it.
Speaker 1: They just walked out of the shop without paying. And
Speaker 1: he said. I went over to the counter and said,
Speaker 1: did you see that? Did you see those kids? And
Speaker 1: they said, yeah, we saw it, but we've been told
Speaker 1: don't interfere, don't get in their way. It's not worth it,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not worth the risk, etc. And so
Speaker 1: basically it seems that a lot of stores have got
Speaker 1: that attitude that when certain groups steal stuff, they don't interfere,
Speaker 1: they don't try and stop them. When they call the police,
Speaker 1: the police know exactly who it is, but they've lost
Speaker 1: the taste for the fight too, because a lot of
Speaker 1: these kids are relatively young, and the police are tired
Speaker 1: of grabbing them arresting them because they know that they
Speaker 1: go into a revolving door where they just automatically get
Speaker 1: bail because of their relative youth. Some listeners might think
Speaker 1: that that's just a bald assertion that it's a revolving door,
Speaker 1: and that we're exaggerating this. Well, you can think that,
Speaker 1: but a person got in touch with me recently. Now,
Speaker 1: this person, I've got to be careful not to identify
Speaker 1: this person, but this person has a very good first
Speaker 1: hand understanding of bail and bail justice work and all that.
Speaker 1: This person is a sort of an official who gets
Speaker 1: to see bail justices at work firsthand. This person named
Speaker 1: a night and said, on that night, youth is brought
Speaker 1: in by the police, clearly a problem child for the community,
Speaker 1: steals cars, does Agberg's home invasions a real problem. You know,
Speaker 1: a dangerous person in many ways and the potential to
Speaker 1: hurt people because they steal cars and drive fast and
Speaker 1: just go through red lights. They're very dangerous. And this
Speaker 1: person said that youth was held for the night, but
Speaker 1: next day he faced children's court and he faced a
Speaker 1: magistrate and a bail application was made for him, and
Speaker 1: the magistrate let him walk, put him back on the street.
Speaker 1: So nighttime, held overnight, next morning face caught. Magistrate says, yeah,
Speaker 1: go in the revolving door. You're back on the street.
Speaker 1: Guess what happened. By the night after that, that kid
Speaker 1: was back in business. Let's to say he had a
Speaker 1: big night out, been grabbed after stealing cars, home invasion.
Speaker 1: He's grabbed, next day, faces court, he's released on bail,
Speaker 1: he goes out. Let's say, within twenty four hours, does
Speaker 1: the same stuff, same offenses. He's grabbed again. And so
Speaker 1: by the next night, and I'm making those days up.
Speaker 1: By the next night, he's back in custody. Now, whether
Speaker 1: he stayed in custody or that third night, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but on form he won't have because that youth. His
Speaker 1: record of offenses is eight pages long of very closely
Speaker 1: typed material, so he has dozens and scores of offenses already,
Speaker 1: which is staggering. But as my colleague Mark Butler points out,
Speaker 1: there is a youth out there somewhere who has got
Speaker 1: at least four hundred offenses on his record, his docket
Speaker 1: as we used to call it, as four hundred offenses.
Speaker 1: He will hit five hundred pretty rapidly and keep going
Speaker 1: because at his age and stage, the magistrates are virtually
Speaker 1: told to not lock them up, put them back on
Speaker 1: the street, give them bail. And this is the problem.
Speaker 1: And the person that contacted me, the whistleblower that contacted
Speaker 1: me about this, is someone who is involved in that
Speaker 1: process up close and personal, but feels that that level
Speaker 1: bail justices and magistrates sort of had their hands tied
Speaker 1: by policies imposed on them from above. And that is
Speaker 1: the reality of youth crime in Victoria and to a
Speaker 1: large extent in Australia. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2: Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for
Speaker 2: True Crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns,
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