CENTRAL Victorian Indigenous leaders have warned high rates of youth justice supervision among First Nations young people are linked to a disconnect from culture.
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It comes as statistics reveal young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are over 15 times more likely to be under youth justice supervision.
Bendigo and District Aboriginal Cooperative chief executive Raylene Harradine attributed high rates to - in part - a lack of cultural resilience.
She warned recent social isolation could increase youth justice numbers, as young people were left without meaningful things to do, felt lost, and struggled with mental health.
New Australian Institute of Health and Welfare statistics show 172 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people per 10,000 were under youth justice supervision in 2018-19.
It compares to a rate of 11 per 10,000 people among non-Indigenous young people.
The figures represented a slight drop in the rate of ATSI young people under youth justice supervision, from 176 per 10,000 in 2014-15.
Ms Harradine said BDAC was still seeing a lot of young people people in youth justice.
But she was hopeful that work done in recent years with the Aboriginal Commissioner and the Commissioner for Children in Victoria would lead change.
"Hearing the stories of those young people who have been in the system. Some of the stories were horrific, but hearing how they were feeling in the system really brought to life what it was like for a young person and what they have had to go through," Ms Harradine said.
Ms Harradine said investment needed to happen in the community of at-risk young people at early stages, rather than after they were already involved in the youth justice system.
She said investing culturally into the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community meant young people would know who they were, building strength and resilience.
"You get better value for your funding if the government were to invest there, because it costs so much to keep someone in the system," Ms Harradine said.
"We know children in child protection are usually the ones who go into youth justice. So it's about trying to break that cycle."
Dja Dja Wurrung Corporation chief executive Rodney Carter said it was disappointing to see the rates of youth justice supervision among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people.
Mr Carter said Dja Dja Wurrung people and families were generally more participatory and healthier because of rights recognition work from the traditional owner group.
He said Indigenous people were healthier and stronger when connected as part of a wider community.
Mr Carter said the high rates of youth justice contact among young people reflected people not necessarily being cared for.
"It's too easy also for us to hold parents and the nuclear family structure too harshly to account," Mr Carter said.
"If I think of community in its best sense, it's actually how we're more conscious of younger families, younger persons, at those beginnings of having a child or children, and taking care of those nuclear family."
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