Criminology Research Council grant ; (6/88)
Given the acute and continuing state of youth unemployment and poverty in Australia over the last ten years, it is both timely and important that research into the connections between youth, poverty and crime be investigated. This study has looked historically at the pressures that have been brought to bear on young people in Australia and the continuing policing of youthful pleasures. Now at a time of soaring youth unemployment the pressures of poverty can be seen to be drawing young people into doing wrong or what Focault would call 'transgressions'. Much of this crime is of a subsistence nature and has become a necessary part of being poor, resulting in the case of young people of the policing of poverty.
For young women an integral part of the transgressions of poverty involves participation in the vice industry as part of the black or cash economy.
Australia is experiencing an increasingly vulnerable group of young people who fall outside the guarantee of either work, training, or education and who are being pushed by policies to the margins of Australian everyday life. There is a need for careful consideration of the following:
- that a joint Ministerial group on youth crime prevention be set up to consider and assist with the development of local youth policies and youth crime prevention strategies;
- investigate ways in which an element of financial independence can be achieved for young people in need;
- an enquiry to investigate the place of youth workers in all States in the work specifically of youth crime reduction and prevention;
- an investigation into the ways that education can be made more flexible to account for the special needs of all young people, and to consider home tuition schemes as part of crime prevention;
- the tying of special funds specifically to programs aimed at youth crime prevention should be considered; and
- further funding should be allocated for continuing research into the effects of the structures of modern Australia on the lives of young people.
Action by all States needs to be immediate, otherwise the urban riots experienced in recent times in both the UK and the USA will quickly become a reality throughout Australia.