Who's To Blame?In this episode, we speak with a youth offender.
We have changed their voice and de-indetified them, but we hear how the transition from primary school to high school was the start of their unrevalling.
We also hear about the ReKindle in QLD that aims to rehabilitate and offer training to reduce recidivism or reoffending.
Apoche production.
As we start this episode, I wanted to quickly touch on some of the news that happened the week before we released the first episode of Who's to Blame. You've heard in previous episodes, the tragic night where Emma Lovell was killed by a youth offender who broke into their home while they slept. Lee and his daughters still live in that same house. On Sunday night before our first episode drop, the news broke.
Good evening a gang of young criminals has struck just meters from where Northlake's mother, Emma Lovell was stamped to death nearly two years ago.
It's the early hours of the morning.
Teenagers in sche masks burst into a property at North Lakes.
Yeah, very unervan, very very angry as well that they think they can just come round and.
Do things like that.
The home they targeted is directly next door to Lee love.
Yeah, it sort of brings back a lot of fears of what happened that night. It's happened to us once. It just won't happen in this area again. But there's no consequence of the actions that they're doing, so they can just be locked up one day and be let out. The next.
We're going to speak to Lee Moore about life after Emma's death and what his thoughts are on who's to blame. But I thought in this episode we could explore what drives some of these kids to commit these crimes. Laws in Queensland, like in most other states, don't allow us to identify youth offenders, even if they agreed to talking to us, and even if they now are over the age of eighteen.
I actually do want to go back to them people and tell them how sorry I am.
That law itself, to me is a little baffling, as I believe hearing firsthand from youth offenders on why this is happening and what led to it happening might actually help us understand. But either way, we can't identify them. This first piece of audio has been taken from a documentary that was put together by the Queensland Police Service around their response to youth defending in twenty twenty three.
Did you think about the people you were stealing from?
No, didn't have a clue, didn't really care. But that's the only thing I learned, because that's the only thing we could do. You steal from the shops and from people and all that.
That documentary has also come under fire recently due to the first thirty seconds of the footage.
No front toys have stump stand boys stand on the ground, on the ground, on the ground behind your back.
Do you have anything on under a red break?
You've taken anything at all under the World Center.
I just hadn't be pan exciting.
That's okay. You don't a lot of thing by buying yourself like that. I didn't really want to get in the carry happy choice. We've always got choices. It's no future in doing my business.
There you go.
The issue that some had with that was that some of the kids were handcuffed although they were complying with the directions of the police officer. An officer is not to handcuff a child unless the child cannot be controlled by other means.
According to the Operational Procedures Manual.
Police did not have the power to handcuff that young girl because she appears to have been fully complying with their own Police are trained know that the law no that operating manual.
The documentary itself is really well done and shows the levels that police have to go through when tackling this complex issue. But I guess it's a little bit sanitized as it is made by the QPS. The next voice you'll hear is a former youth offender. He's now over the age of eighteen, but we've changed his voice and taken out any identifying information.
So I was little kid, often feel about grade seven or A. And then I saw the going into high school and it wasn't the best high school, and they got into a work wrong group of friends, and I started getting to drugs quite early.
How are were you when that all started to go on?
I would say about thirteen fourteen, maybe do you late early grad eight?
I'd like to jump in with a warning here. It's important to note that what we're about to talk about is not to give anyone any ideas, but more importantly, to show how easy it was for this boy to take a wrong turn. We have spoken with numerous chemists who all say they asked for ID and proof with this sort of purchase. Remembering this happened some years ago, how did it all begin? If you like?
So, my friend brought a bottle of cost syrup to school.
Cough syrup, Yeah, okay? And then so what happens next?
We started to pour some in the bottle and start to drink it. You drink a certain the now and you start to deal with And after that we started doing it, or I would say, most days at school.
And so how are you getting how are you getting cough syrup?
We were just walking into pharmaciason buying.
It as a thirteen year old, and no one's batting an eyelid because it's cough syrup? Right, I guess yeah, pretty much.
You just say I just used to say it was for my parents, and they tell me anything.
What was What was it like for you as a kid, so it was a thirteen year old as you're going to high school. What was family life like for you at home? Your mum and dad still together? Were they?
Yes?
Traditionally we have this view of you know, of people who end up committing you crime from broken families that don't care those sorts of things. Was that your family? Is that what your family looked like?
No, so of my friend's family looked like that. But it wasn't fine. We started off, you know, just going into pharmacy seeing what we could buy. You could buy a surprising amount of stuff as a thirteen and then you and then we started to go, you know, to drug dealers for stans, codeine, all of that type of stuff.
How do you find them as a thirteen year old? How did you find them?
Well, by that point, a lot of my friends are run pretty hard drugs than fourteen. Yeah, fourteen pushing it now a lot of my friends were starting to take half the stuff, so I could ask them for dealers, and you could ask them for dealers drugs?
Is I guess the first part where things then start to go a little miss. What happens to your schooling.
Your grade stuff, the job? You go from you know, C students to a D E student?
What are you folks saying at this point?
Are they?
Are they noticing anything about you at home?
A bit? But they're not. It's not to mention yet. I'm clearly of it off. You know, I'm going out to MAT's houses on the weekends. I'm being home the next morning absolutely off my face. I come home, I go straight to my room and I take whatever I got from that night.
And so at that stage was what was important in your life?
Honestly? Major coming out with my friends getting absolutely fucked up.
When does it escalate from just doing drugs? On the weekend with your mates to get into other mischiefs.
That really escalated to me when my other friends started doing it. I was never too bad personally, but you know, breaking into cars houses always needed money, you know, healing shit, all the basic stuff, fighting.
And the money was about the drugs. Yes, what's the thinking about taking a weapon into a house that you break into.
The owner might have you know, knife, gone on a baseball bat, and I'm not one hundred percent sure why they'd do it, but assumeing it was the whack the owner if they only confronted them, Yeah, it was nothing passon to sell drugs as well. You're driven off drug dealers, not completely, nothing personal, just they have money and we want the money.
So what's the worst it gets for you?
The worst it gets for me? I mostly saw drugs. I went out, solved little with the math, sold it with a couple of other things. You know, I didn't really want to go to Juby yep, that's where That's where friends who stole cars and broken townses ended up. At some point they're ankle monitors now.
And so those mates that ended up in Juvi that do you know what their experience was like.
I know some of them when juv after stealing cars, there's still decent kids tough wise, aren't still decent kids? And some came back out as matheatics.
I guess in those instances juvenile detention actually got made it worse as opposed to make it better, made it a lot worse. Do you have any experiences or stories of your mates in juvy and what sort of things and how they were treated and those sorts of things.
They never really spoke about it.
What stops you from taking that next step? How do you do you ever get arrested?
I was always lucky.
What was the moment for you that you went fuck and I need to stop? Or did someone help you?
I just got it, became more heavily addicted, and I just stopped caring about those things as long as I could get money. I didn't really care about all the adrenaline and stuff. It's just what is a lot of stealing cars?
And at the stage are you still living with your parents?
Yes? Only recently. I got kicked out of school with my early grade ten, so I went off the rails a bit there.
This boy is about to enter a program that helps with reintegrating him with the community.
Only recently I've been offered to go back there to help me finish high school and clean up them more reading your friend of a friend that knew the program.
And so you haven't yet entered the program yet. How are you feeling about your life now?
It's better than it was as a teenager, but they could definitely get better. That definitely makes a new friends that aren't in prison.
What have you done about those friends that you used to hang out with back in when you were thirteen fourteen and those guys that have been to juvie? What do you do about those friends?
Some of them have fucked me over. Some of them I still see, but it's sad to be honest, they were a long game. Now.
When you were a kid, before you entered high school, what did you want to be?
I wanted to be a professional runner or professional footballer.
Were you any good?
I yeah, that was pretty decent. I wanted to meddle just sport.
Now play a role in your in maybe your future.
Yeah, yeah, I'm still playing.
There's going to be people that listen to this podcast and straightway blame. If you like the parents and the families, what do you say to those people.
It's not always the family. There can be other bad influences in life. There is very real circumstances where the parents are cracked out. But it's not always the family. It's my family was fine. I just went to the wrong school at the wrong time.
Who do you think is to blame for the current crisis that we're in with youth crime.
I think there's a lot of people to blame. Most people have a little bit of blame on them. Some parents have a little bit of blame on them. They could have definitely done better. The police of a decent man, blame on them. You're going to treat someone like a criminal, they're going to act like a criminal. And some of the kids have a bit of blame on them. Some of them just wanted to be cool and wanted to be tough and started doing stupid shiit.
What's your advice to anyone that is listening to the show that could possibly get down the same path as you?
Stick with sport, follow your dream for example, of it ruins your life. Some people never come back. I was lucky. As I said, I think there's a lot of time. I think, yeah, it's hard one you need to fix the first. Honestly, you need to help families at home when they're fixing me, need to help them, and then you need to help fix the police. They're just fucking assholes. I haven't I don't have a criminal record, and I don't treated like a criminal. Every time I pulled up, they pull you all. You know, they take your phoe though, they yell your bit, they go to you a one different knife. Then they let you go every single time you see them, and if they don't, if you don't, then do that they take you in.
And how does that make you feel.
Fucking criminal?
And if that makes you feel like a criminal, then I think you said earlier, if you treat me like a.
Criminal, I'm kind to act like a fucking criminal.
Yeah, how do you want to be.
Treated like a billion? Like I'm a normal person?
So what are you looking forward to about joining a program?
I'm looking forward to getting my grade ten and twelve certificate and getting a better job.
Why is that important to your grade ten and your.
Twelve because at some point I'd like maybe too at the university and kind of rememerk one novel education not an.
Option one of the programs that helps young people like we've just been speaking to is the Rekindle program. It operates out of a shed in Brisbane, Salisbury. Rekindle is a reintegration and work experience program designed to empower young people and ignite their potential. So Rekindle's been around for just on a month and talk to me about its aim. What's its aime?
Yeah?
I think you call it like a cooperative. I really want We already have a lot of people who are doing great stuff in the community with young people coming out of youth justice or youth detention. We have mentors, we have a graphic design studio, we have caterers who have been going into the detention centers providing training and support. And there's just so many people that want to be able to do things and they've been doing them in isolation. It's kind of like an experiment to see what happens if you bring them all into one space and there's an actual physical space where you can work from, and the young people get to design it themselves, right, so they get to tell us what it looks like, what it feels like. The first cohort is kind of like our founders. It's like there's six young people come in and we create like discovery sessions on what artwork do we want to hear, what type of activities do you want to do? And then the space itself is like a living experiment in itself in connection to food and farmers and regeneration. So it's just like a really great collaboration.
I think, how do those young people find rekindle? How do they find you?
Sohaia and Albert, they've been going into use justice for quite some time now, Hawaiia especially has been doing it for years and years. And the way in which the young people engage with them is like, Oh, Auntie comes into the prison, I have a really strong connection with her. She's here to support me. So when they get out, Arnie picks her, picks them up and then drives them here and then it's like, oh, there's a connection point there. She's connected the young people to this space of the shed. And then slowly young people introduced to other people here. And I think one of the most important things that we try to do is all the adults here know what's going on, and they know how to engage with the young people, and they know not to like try and push yourself on to them. Dominate them, you know what I mean, it's very open collaborative. I mean, part of what we want to do is like work out what's like an intrauma informed where that old people know how to bring young people in the right way so that young people find and it's just them finding their own way.
We talked about, you know, sort of that village mentality of you know, it takes a village to raise a child. This is one part of the village. And you're aware of other great work that's being done throughout Queensland and throughout Australia right now in sort of this area.
Yeah, I'm plumped to be able to have access to so many great programs. One I always talk about is Confit Pathways in New South run by Joe Quin who was in prison himself for nine years. I met a businessman in there and just came out pumped to start something. Started his own business was quite successful. Then was like I've got to give back. And so now has five or six different mentors in the similar historical sort of offending as him, and he goes into youth detention centers and creates fitness programs and then he also has a gym in Paramatta in Sydney, and that's a social enterprise to be able to have young people engage us a gym, be mentored, and that's like the epitome of I think what a good youth justice program can be. Lived experience, has a cool factor that kids want to engage with, has his inspirational factor of that person was me one time and this is what he's done, and then also creates this like great community brand. When I was growing up, myself was so easy. He just got distracted if there wasn't something that was keeping me in life. I was very luckly to have like parents that were pretty normal, right, Like we weren't killing it, but we weren't poor. I had friends. I'd go to my friends every day, I'd hang out. And I think that sometimes the rhetoric that happens around youth crime or young offenders or stuff, there's a cast that's like painted across the whole youth system, and what they then see is I'm going to live up to that. And if they don't have that consistent daily engagement with positive stuff, with mentors, with opportunities and they're in the community and they're with their friends, there's almost like this fight or flight type mentally they all have where it's like they don't really know what to do in situations, and they'll act up to stay with their crowd and they'll be like, oh, that person's like stealing that stuff, I'm going to go with them. They'll try and show, which means like, oh, I'll steal his car put on Instagram, you know what I mean. And that's creating their identity that they feel like they need. So I think like that consistency of like getting up in the morning, going to something and then coming home and going to bed is very alien to a lot of our young people, and we can I think there's an opportunity to be able to provide that if there is a strong enough connection with community mentors and those types of things. Which is a tough ask because it almost feels like a societal shift to be like young people are like working through some stuff, Let's help them for long enough to get through it. Versus young people are marking up. Let's put them somewhere so that everyone's safe. It's kind of like two parts in which is quite disparate in terms of their outcomes or what you can do.
So we've asked this to everyone we've interviewed on the podcast, and it's a loaded question. Who do you think is to blame for our current crisis in Queensland and Australia.
This might be combative, but I think it's might be the wrong question. I think if there's a global response that I could give in one word two words, it would be the system. But that's also like a cop out.
I think.
Everyone is to blame and no one is to blame because every day there's an opportunity for an adult to see a young person in a different light and provide them with that pathway to being a good human, And every day there's a choice of that young person to be a good human and to feel like they have an opportunity. So I would say I'd love to see everyone meet in the middle to be able to come together on a joint outcome, which is like a good society. And that's going to be super difficult because it's much easier to sit on either end of the spectrum, I think for humans. And that's what people take notes of. They're like, oh, that's super rough, Like I hate that or I love that. I don't know what it is, but I think there's some way in which you can tell a narrative where people come and meet in the middle and they have discussions and debate and it's heated sometimes, but at the end of the day, the outcome is a better society.
Across Queensland right now, there are many different programs like Rekindle the tackle youth crime from many different angles. Some tackle transitioning young people who are at risk of entering youth justice with vocational training and life skills and then transitioning them into employment or education. Some are restorative programs that let offenders and they're victims meet in an effort to show the offender the impact they've had on others' lives and provide closure for the victim. There are corespond to teams that consist of police and youth justice workers who respond to incidents involving young people. There's Aggression Replacement training which tries to teach young offenders how to manage their anger and reduce aggressive behavior, aiming to prevent reoffending. There's a conditional bail program which offer intensive supervision and support for young people on bail, including monitoring and case management to ensure they comply with their bail conditions and reduce the likelihood of reoffending. And then there are adventure based programs. These programs use outdoor activities and challenges to build self esteem, teamwork and problem solving skills among young offenders. Will Smith runs one of these programs in Tasmania. It's just been given a Tasmanian State grant. Let's hear how Will's JCP program is changing lives in Tazy.
Yeah.
So, JCP is an abbreviation for a name, John Cobbler Pounds. John Cobbler Pounds was a bloke born in the eighteen hundreds. And I just you know those late night read things where you come across this story and I think, jeez, that's cool, just reading a story about this bloke. And he was fourteen, fell off a ship while he was building it with his dad, became disabled. So he opened up a cobbler shop, fixing and mending people's shoes, and he then went on to live into his sixties. In his entire life, he dedicated to help an at risk and vulnerable kids in his shop, and he had thirty forty fifty kids in his shop every day. Taught him how to read and write and sort of value based systems. Wasn't connected to any particular religion or ideal or group, just just sort of a guy trying to do the right thing. And when he passed away. Not many people know this, but he became the inspiration for the whole education system reforming to allow all young people the opportunity to go to school. Back in the eighteen hundreds, if he didn't have money, didn't get educated. So what they found in that town of Portsmouth in England is that all these kids were getting educated. So the local economy was absolutely going through the roof. We had kids that were able to apply for a whole range of different jobs and skins, all sets that they wouldn't ordinarily have in other townships. And so the education system based on the framework of people like JCP yeah, begin to begin to sort of slowly change the way that we work with young people in our systems.
Well, the logo it's jigsaw piece.
Yeah, So we consider ourselves to be one piece of the puzzle of a young person's life. So the concept is that we're not the answer or the solution, and we don't think anyone else is individually. Young people require a consolidated community effort, and everyone plays a role, parents, caregivers, services, neighbors, sporting clubs, groups, random persons walking down the street, and us together we make up a young person's life and a successful transition to life. So yeah, it's a reminder for us we're just one piece of the puzzle. We're not the solution to everything, even though at times we might think we are. But also it's a reminder that collaboration's key. When we were trying to, you know, successfully transition a young person.
And Beast is the program. Talk to me about what Beast means. Yeah, Beast.
When we're trying to name the program, we wanted to keep it a bit separate from the organization name. Beast is owned by the boys, so they it's their program. You can't ask a young person to rock up to a program they don't have ownership over. You know, those first group of five boys, we asked them a question, what do you want to be when you grow up? A couple of boys. You know, I want to be a professional basketball player or I want to be a mechanic. One of the boys just said, oh, I don't know, I just want to be a beast. And yeah, so we named the Beast program after that and just sort of it's not an acronym, it's literally just after one of the first boys that graduated that said yeah, I just want to be a Beast, and they created the logo, and you know, it's their brand, it's their name. When you see the boys in the street, they'll be branded up, Kit it Up. They've got their own clothing line and things they were So it just gives them my ownership over you know, what we're trying to deliver to them. As a disclaimer, mentioned to start with that, when we first started working with the Five Boys, there was absolutely no process. I would go camping every weekend with my mates and fishing and motorbike riding, and they just tagged along, okay, And that was the initial process. It was just let's get them, I mean, not trying to be egotistical. Let's get them around good people you know that don't there's no drugs, no alcohol, not smoking, talk about positive things and just do what we ordinarily do, which was fishing, motorbike riding, camping.
So that was sort of.
How the program initially started. That makes me shudder in my boots now when I look back in relation to policy procedure, clinical governance, rist managements just pretty crazy. But that's how it started. The process of the program now is that we wanted to identify gaps in the system with young people, and for me, working and coming from the police, there's massive gaps in the system in relation to kids that sit at the pinnacle of the system, and so our program is specifically designed around those gaps. And where the gap lies for us is that there are young people that exist within our communities that commit the majority of the crime. They commit the majority of the serious crime, and they remain the biggest burden on our local economy and community safety measures. And what I mean by that is they cost a lot of money. You know, in Tazzy, to have a young person in our detention center costs one point three million dollars a year. So that's a massive amount of money. Now when we consider that the rate of receivativism is so high that those young people will transition out of that detention center and pretty much straight into prison. As for the majority, the costs that they incur on the community is huge. So there's a huge gap there, a massive gap in working with young people who are very complex and you know, are not just sort of getting in trouble with the plea or having some disagreements and fights at home. I'm talking about young people who are at that pinnacle of the system that you know, don't have anywhere to go, that are actively committing offenses, regularly ongoing, or a very high risk of doing so. So the premise of the program is that young people come and we take them away on an outdoor adventure. So they climb them mountain at four am in the morning, they fly in helicopters to the middle of the central platter, they jump off ten meter platforms in the water, and we create an environment where we empower and uplift those young people to feel unbelievably amazing. And you know, it's tough and challenging and it's brutal, but it's also extreme relationship building and connection. And so young people come and engage in this process and we see this happening across the country. There are programs where young people are taken away from their community, they're put through a program, and the challenge we then had is those programs create really good results, but they're not sustainable results. Young people are successful whilst they're in the program, but when they're placed back in the community over a month two months, they revert back behaviors because influence and environment play a massive role in the way that young people sort of affect change.
Next time on who's to blame.
Who's to blame here in Queensland, my honest opinion, not the police, not government services, not the young people. I go back to our puzzle piece analogy. You know, I think everyone plays a role. I think technology is a massive contributor to the way that young people are being brought up At the moment, we're talking social media, social media, screen time, you know, the content absorption of young people across various platforms, where we're so accustomed these days to seeing a young person in need and stepping back as opposed to stepping forward.
