From the President: The Path Forward on Youth Justice Must be Based in Evidence

On 31 July 2025 the NT Parliament passed the Youth Justice Legislation Amendment Bill. It reintroduces spit hoods, expands use-of-force powers, removes detention as a last resort, and restricts access to diversion. These reversals directly contradict the 2017 Royal Commission’s recommendations. Health, legal and oversight bodies immediately sounded the alarm warning that harsher penalties will not make the Territory safer.

The experience of our members

Every day, our members see the impact of youth justice policy in their classrooms. When students cycle in and out of detention, they return more unsettled, harder to regulate, and further behind in their learning. The government’s new laws will only make this worse. As teachers, the case for evidence-based reform is grounded in our work. We know that stable relationships, smaller classes, and trauma-aware practice are what help young people re-engage and build a future. I strongly believe that we should not accept reforms that ignore both our professional knowledge and the Royal Commission’s recommendations.

In February the government closed the Owen Springs (Alice Springs) youth detention centre and moved young people to Darwin with minimal notice. Teachers and youth workers warned this would sever trusted relationships and interrupt trauma-informed learning built over years—precisely the protective factors that help young people stabilise and re-engage. Media Release- AEU Members Condemn Owen Springs Decision

Those same concerns now meet harsher laws. When policy amplifies segregation, physical control and removal from community, it ricochets back into schools: students return more distressed, transitions are rockier, and classroom stability suffers.

The Decisions of our union

Our union has responded through the decisions of its democratic structures and through public action:

• Branch Conference passed a motion (Decision 90/2025) in May opposing the government’s youth justice amendments for the reasons above, grounding our stance in children’s rights and professional standards. 2025 Conference Decisions

• Sub-branch and Regional actions have reinforced the same message. A recent motion from Casuarina Senior College calling for action on the issue has since been endorsed by Darwin Regional Council. AEU CSC – Youth Justice Motion 

• Open letter (August 2025): we joined health, legal, community and faith organisations to urge the Government to abandon punitive measures (including the OC spray trial) and return to evidence-based approaches. Independent coverage lists AEU NT among signatories alongside peak bodies and service organisations. Open Letter

These send a consistent message: youth justice decisions should not come at the expense of children’s rights or the professional knowledge and practice of educators.

What the evidence says about the path forward

Teachers know that trauma-aware schooling works. Calm routines, strong relationships, explicit teaching of regulation skills, and culturally safe practice work together lower dysregulation and help students re-engage with learning. Many successful programs used in Australian schools, demonstrate that when teachers have time, training and support, behaviours stabilise and classrooms become safer.

This is backed by strong science. Trauma alters the way a child’s brain develops. A repeated stress response keeps the amygdala (the brain’s alarm system) on high alert, while impairing the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. These are the very regions needed for memory, attention, decision-making and emotional regulation. Unless schools create safe, predictable environments that calm this threat response, students cannot concentrate, retain information, or manage their emotions effectively.

The government’s new laws pull in the opposite direction. Spit hoods, force and isolation heighten arousal, entrench hyper-vigilance, and directly undermine the therapeutic and relational work that teachers are asked to do every day.

The systemic education gap

It is not hard to draw a correlation between the funding drained away from our most disadvantaged schools over the past decade and the rise in youth crime. The NT’s “effective enrolment” model starved our schools of millions by tying funding to attendance instead of enrolment. The result was predictable. The very schools that needed the most support were forced to cut back staff and programs, leaving the Territory’s most vulnerable students without the resources needed to keep them connected to learning.

Those shortages show up in bigger class loads, reduced support staff, fewer specialists, and less time to do the trauma-informed work that changes trajectories.

Although Effective Enrolment is finally gone, class sizes remain too big and system policies are too often focused on data collection rather than student wellbeing. Too many children are pushed through the door to be counted as an attendance statistic, with little thought for how teachers are meant to manage learning or behaviour once they are inside. Teachers want to do what is best for these students, but they need the time, space and resourcing to make it possible.

When young people don’t get the educational support they need early, the pattern is predictable: disengagement, alienation, and eventually contact with the justice system.

What a trauma-aware, evidence-aligned NT looks like

If the goal is safer communities and better outcomes, policy and resourcing should line up with what works in schools:

1. Restore and legislate safeguards: detention as a true last resort, clear limits on restraints and isolation, no spit hoods for children; align youth justice operations with the Royal Commission’s direction. 

2. Lock in fair funding: meet 100% SRS on time (or faster for highest-need schools), and recognise genuine NT cost drivers (housing, travel, staffing for very small schools) in allocations and central supports. 

3. Fund trauma-aware, whole-school models: paid time for coaching and debriefs; consistent evidence-based training; protected staffing for regulation spaces; steady specialist support (allied health, youth workers) in schools. 

4. Grow the local workforce: invest in Aboriginal educator pathways and qualifications so more kids are taught by people with deep cultural and community ties, which is key to safety and engagement. 

5. Back flexible learning that keeps kids connected: fund programs to NT’s own quality standards, ensuring transitions to and from detention are planned, gentle, and learning progress is not threatened or lost.