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Ross, Emma --- "Watch And Wait: Suspect Target Management Plans And The Criminalisation Of Young People" [2021] UNSWLawJlStuS 38; (2021) UNSWLJ Student Series No 21-38


WATCH AND WAIT:

SUSPECT TARGET MANAGEMENT PLANS AND THE CRIMINALISATION OF YOUNG PEOPLE

EMMA ROSS

Suspect Target Management Plans (STMPs) have a pernicious effect on the young people they are utilised against through the processes of net widening and criminalisation, and their use raises issues around their fundamental incompatibility with the rule of law and basic legal principles. They allow for law enforcement agents to employ a ‘watch and wait’ strategy which allows for the ensnarement of young people into the web of the criminal law system, and through this contact, which may otherwise never have occurred, the criminalisation of young people is perpetuated. The program is wielded disproportionately against young people and Aboriginal people, with Aboriginal youth facing compounding scrutiny and disadvantage as a result. Young Aboriginal people are wildly overrepresented within the program and are likely to face even more harmful lifetime effects as a result of its use.

In medical terminology, to ‘watch and wait’ is to monitor for symptoms when a diagnosis is suspected but the need for action is uncertain. This watchful monitoring, benevolently designed to allow for a quick response when a medical hypothesis is confirmed and the need for action is clear, takes on a sinister quality when applied in law enforcement. The condition which has yet to be diagnosed is that of criminality, with children who have never been charged with, let alone convicted of, a crime placed on a surveillance list, for their behaviour to be observed and judged through the prism of criminality. STMPs do not allow for the neutral monitoring of potential criminality; the behaviour of a young person on an STMP is seen through the lens of criminality and suspicion conferred by the program. An STMP does not detect criminal behaviour, it creates it.

In this essay, I contend that STMPs are an illegitimate form of crime prevention and they impinge upon basic legal rights and freedoms which are broadly taken for granted by non-marginalised groups. In this way, STMPs impinge most strongly upon marginalised groups. Two illustrative examples of the inappropriate use and corrosive effects of the STMP are its use on young Aboriginal people and on children under the age of 14, where the principle of doli incapax should protect them from predictive policing, for which the presumption of capacity for wrongdoing is a prerequisite. Where the equivalent behaviour of a child may have been seen as ‘merely naughty’, for the child on an STMP all naughtiness places them at risk of criminal sanction, extra-judicial monitoring, and other danger, a particularly fraught position for Aboriginal children who are at the intersection of these two issues.

I THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SUSPECT TARGET MANAGEMENT PLAN

The emergence of the Suspect Target Management Plan must be contextualised within the political and legal landscape of NSW criminal law reform[1]. There has been a failure to formulate responses to crime and recidivism in an evidence-based manner, and a ‘common sense’ approach has been relied upon, of which the STMP is one example[2]. This has been to the detriment of vulnerable parties and to society more broadly, as these punitive policies fail to achieve real results in regards to more cohesive communities and better criminal justice outcomes for children and families.

The Suspect Target Management Plan originated within the intelligence arm of the NSW Police in 1999, and was implemented for use by Local Area Commands in February 2000[3]. The current iteration of the STMP, STMP II (referred to simply in this essay as ‘STMP’ for brevity) has been in operation since 2005, and has been subject to little meaningful reform since that time[4].

The STMP is representative of a significant reach into the everyday lives of its targets, and yet it is a policy that largely relies on both secrecy and discretion in order to operate[5]. This large degree of discretion conferred on police officers in regards to the daily operation of the STMP program has serious implications for the young people targeted by the program. Discretionary power is identified as a major factor in the criminalisation of young people and can act as an aggravating factor in their interactions with police[6]. One of the key indicators which determines the nature and level of police response to young people is the subjective perception of ‘attitude’[7]. Where a program allows for a high level of discretion in the policing and surveillance of young people, there is a greater likelihood that these young people will be subjected to an inappropriate level of scrutiny and criminalization, as occurs in the case of the STMP.

There is quite extensive literature on the STMP and young people, with quite extensive critical analysis of its harmful and criminogenic effects. Further, this literature examines and examines the policy in the context of concepts such as criminalisation and net widening.

One area of literature on the STMP which appears to be lacking is a comprehensive assessment of the origins and early development of the policy, including any precursors that it grew out of, and a broader assessment of how law and order politics in NSW have contributed to the STMP as a tool of over policing and surveillance.

II PROBLEMATIZING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE SUSPECT TARGET MANAGEMENT PLAN

There has been a range of analysis, both data-driven and theoretical, of the effectiveness of the STMP. The concept of ‘effectiveness’ in regards to any approach to juvenile justice must be assessed and deconstructed. The effectiveness of the policy, in terms of whether or not the data indicates that the policy is successful in reducing crime, cannot and should not be examined in isolation from a critical assessment of that which the policy presupposes about young people and the policing of young people.

Examining the data on the effectiveness of STMPs on its face reveals mixed results. BOCSAR’s evaluation of the STMP contended that the program successfully lowered rates of crimes amongst the individuals being surveilled[8]. They have reported that STMPs are associated with lowered rates of property crime, but not violent crime[9]. Their use is also associated with a significantly greater risk of imprisonment[10].

The lack of any evidence suggesting that STMPs lead to a reduction in violent crime raise serious concerns with the usefulness and appropriateness of the policy. The NSW police force have pointed to the effectiveness of the policy in reducing crime rates as a key justification for the program’s continued operation, and in direct response to criticism at the use of STMPs against young people and Aboriginal people[11]. Considering the considerable impingement into the lives and freedoms of the young people targeted by the program, the program’s limited ‘effectiveness’ in the area of property crime does not appear to justify the extent of the program's conflicts with basic legal rights and principles and with the legal system’s heightened obligations to young people in particular.

A review of the BOCSAR report which offers an alternative analysis of the data on the program suggests the STMP program is made up of a large number of individuals who have committed a small number of offences and a small minority who have committed many offences[12]. Watson points to this data as evidence that the policy is not operating as effectively as has been claimed.

Judging the ‘effectiveness’ of the STMP program through an analysis of whether or not it is successful in reducing crime rates is inherently flawed, and fails to adequately challenge the underlying presuppositions and assumptions inherent within the policy, which reflect those which are inherent in the policing and monitoring of young people more broadly. By critically examining issues like the compatibility of the STMP generally with the rule of law, its high risk of criminalisation of young people and its operation as a tool of net widening, it is clear that even data which clearly showed a decrease in future crime would not necessarily be sufficient to justify the continued operation of the policy.

The LECC report into STMPs identified a number of potentially illegal practices which were routinely used in the enforcement and application of the plans[13]. These fundamental conflicts between the STMP and basic legal principles raise serious questions about its compatibility with the rule of law broadly in its use on any adult person, let alone on more marginalised and vulnerable groups like children and Aboriginal people. Abuse of the STMP in the place of legitimate grounds for reasonable suspicion appears to be commonplace in the implementation of the policy. Sentas and Pandolfini speculate that many police officers incorrectly assume that the presence of a person on the STMP database is sufficient grounds for reasonable suspicion, to then allow for stops and searches[14]. Officers may believe that informing a suspect that they are the subject of an STMP may fulfil the requirement under LEPRA for them to provide a reason for a search, when in fact it does not[15].

These issues are inherent to the operation of the STMP as a tool of intelligence, which serves to make its application opaque and difficult to challenge[16]. The issue of the incompatibility between the use of the STMP on adults and the preservation of their basic legal rights and freedoms becomes particularly acute in its application to young people, who should be afforded a higher degree of protection by the law by definition, but are in fact targeted disproportionately by the police[17]. The most extreme example of this conflict with basic principles is explored in greater detail in this essay in relation to the conflict between the targeting of children under fourteen and even children under ten and doli incapax.

A Suspect Target Management Plans through the lens of Criminalisation

Through the lens that the Suspect Target Management Plan employs, young people are characterised as ‘criminals’- the policy is not reactive to individual behaviours or incidents but is instead in the business of identifying the kind of person who requires supervision. This very process, inherent to the application of the STMP, is a clear example of criminalisation. In this model, the police play an active role in creating conditions for future crimes[18].

One feature inherent within the STMP which illustrates the extent to which children and young people targeted under the program are subjected to criminalisation is the process, or lack thereof, by which an STMP ceases to operate[19]. While the process for the addition or removal of targets to the STMP database is opaque, legal practitioners have identified through the course of research and practice that it appears that there are only three sets of criteria that precipitate the removal of a target: the suspect is incarcerated, the suspect is deceased or if the suspect’s “criminal behaviour appears to have ceased”[20]. There is no requirement for formal notification of a suspect when they have been placed on the STMP database, nor is there an appeals process available for a target who wishes to be removed[21]. This process is disturbing, as it seems either by design or negligence to ensnare children within the criminal justice system indefinitely. Incarceration appears to follow as a natural consequence of the policy, creating a pipeline from local police surveillance into carceral punishment. Additionally, the reliance on such a high degree of discretion in regards to when a suspect’s “criminal behaviour appears to have ceased” is likely to lead to greater intervention as a matter of course, as previously highlighted (Richards et al 2019: 371)[22]. This metric is particularly problematic as it is clear that not all children targeted by the STMP have offended or are likely to commit an offence.

Aspects of the STMP program which are designed to avoid negative interactions and relationships with police, reduce recidivism and redirect potential youth offenders into alternate tasks may in fact be contributing further to the process of criminalisation. One of the strategies which may be deployed by officers in the application of an STMP is a ‘positive strategy’. This may involve channelling children into diversion programs, including programs within the Police Citizens Youth Club[23]. Richards et al identify police intervention which takes the form of diversion into social and sporting programs, regardless of the benevolence of intention, as still likely to contribute to the criminalisation of young people through increased interaction with law enforcement[24]. These programs, which still involve an element of surveillance and which still contribute to a growing list of police interactions for the vulnerable young people involved in them, also serve to divert young people from the social events and support structures already in place in their community. This has the potential to be particularly ineffective and damaging in regards to Aboriginal youth, for whom police run social gatherings may be particularly inappropriate, and for whom the support of cultural support structures and groups are particularly important.

The inappropriate use of an STMP in the place of more appropriate child and family welfare services and programs allows it to comprehensively target young people and enmesh them in the process of criminalisation. The process by which a child is made the target of an STMP need not be punitive in nature at its outset in order to be damaging. Children often become targets of an STMP as a result of identification as potential victims of crime, or by otherwise coming to the attention of the police due to overpolicing of their families or the identification of family and domestic violence within the child’s family[25]. While this initial identification and surveillance of children by police may be done with the sole intention of ensuring the safety of the child, the ensuing process leads to further criminalisation of children. Benevolent intentions are not a good indicator of outcomes for children in the criminal law system; in fact, the opposite is often true. In their data-driven study of police attitudes towards young offenders, Richards et al state, “it is precisely those approaches that appear most well-intentioned and benign that can lead to the greatest levels of unnecessary intervention in the lives of young people”[26]. Additionally, where police do intervene in the lives of disadvantaged and at-risk young people, they are poor judges of the likelihood of future criminality in those young people and tend to over-predict future criminality[27]. This leads to further unnecessary intervention, and therefore greater levels of criminalisation, as police intervention is a strong indicator of future involvement in the criminal justice system[28].

B Suspect Target Management Plans as a Net Widening Tool

The use of STMPs is a highly illustrative example of net widening. Net widening is a policy or program by law enforcement or the broader criminal justice system which results in more individuals being brought into the remit of the criminal law system[29].

STMPs create the conditions for net widening in a number of ways. One of the clearest examples of net widening in action is the addition of children who have been identified as victims or potential victims of domestic violence to the STMP database[30]. One child placed on the STMP database as a result of being identified as at risk of family violence, and who had never been previously charged with a crime, was subsequently charged 14 times after becoming a target[31]. This example clearly illustrates how the dual forces of net widening and criminalisation compound to create adverse outcomes; by placing children who otherwise may not have become the subject of police surveillance within the purview of law enforcement, thereby creating the conditions that lead to their future offending.

By placing children under police surveillance, the STMP also facilitates the activation of other policies and laws which serve as net widening tools. An example is the discriminatory and disproportionate application of offensive language laws to Aboriginal young people in particular[32]. Offensive language provisions have a net widening effect in and of themselves and are used to facilitate arrests[33]. When Aboriginal children are subjected to surveillance without due cause and process via the STMP program, they are more likely to become further entrenched in the criminal law system as a result of the weaponisation of normal adolescent behaviour against them.

III THE APPLICATION OF THE STMP

A Aboriginal Young People and the Suspect Target Management Plan

Bastable and Sentas critically evaluate the Suspect Target Management Plan with particular regard to the experience of Aboriginal young people. Their report, Overpolicing Aboriginal Youth, makes the case for the STMP as a tool that contributes to the criminalisation of Aboriginal youth. They problematise the assumption underpinning the STMP- that further contact with police will lead to a reduction in crime[34].

The STMP is highly secretive and the criteria by which a target is added to the STMP database is opaque. It seems apparent, particularly from an examination of the Aboriginal young people and children who have been placed on STMPs, that the key determining factor is previous contact with police of any nature[35]. This includes contact which was made in the course of the child being identified as a victim of crime.[36]. By making previous contact with police a key criterion for the initiation of systematic future contact, young Aboriginal people are disadvantaged and the cycle of criminalisation of Aboriginal youth and intergenerational overpolicing is perpetuated.

By committing considerable police resources to surveillance of children who have been identified as engaging in minor or petty crimes, and through the frequent stopping and searching of Aboriginal youth, a message is sent to children that they can expect to be viewed as dangerous and as capable of serious criminal intent. This perpetuates the cycle of criminalisation, with data suggesting greater levels of police contact translate to more time spent in police custody over a young person’s life[37].

The BOCSAR report relied on by police to indicate that the STMP program is working as intended in reducing crime rates indicates that this is not the case with young Aboriginal people targeted by the program[38]. The report indicates that for Aboriginal people, STMPs are associated with lower rates of crime reduction and larger rates of imprisonment[39]. In response to these findings in the original BOCSAR report and strong criticism of the policy’s negative effects on Aboriginal people from the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission, the NSW police committed to “improved engagement with Aboriginal community and youth liaison officers'[40]. However, this approach fails to acknowledge the inherent flaws in the STMP program; that the program begins the process of criminalising young people at its first identification of them. Often children are placed on the STMP database as a result of encountering police as victims of family violence[41] . The process of taking a child and placing them on a watchlist begins the process of criminalisation, and encourages a transition in perception of victims from vulnerable children to potential criminals. Increased contact with police is understood to be particularly damaging for young Aboriginal people, for whom increased contact does not have a preventative effect but is likely to increase reoffending and create tension with law enforcement.[42]

Aboriginal children who have been placed on STMPs have reported heightened levels of surveillance of their whole families and others closely associated with them, including of their family homes, leading to disruption in their everyday lives and family structures, which may then place them at higher risk of offending[43]. This use of the STMP as a surveillance tool to monitor the families or support networks of young Aboriginal people who have been identified as at risk of offending is highly concerning, owing to the normalisation of such heightened police presence in Aboriginal communities, and its contribution to the corrosive cycle of “intergenerational overpolicing”[44]. It is clear how this extensive surveillance contributes to both the processes of criminalisation and net widening, with the children having been mistaken for their siblings and exposed to police contact as a result of this extended surveillance[45].

B The Issue of Doli Incapax: Suspect Target Management Plans and Children under the Age of 14

One of the key issues with Suspect Target Management Plans is their fundamental incompatibility with the rule of law and with basic legal principles which underpin the probity and integrity of the ‘justice’ system; a conflict which exists with STMPs in both theory and practice. While there are several inconsistencies between the use of STMPs and basic legal principles designed to protect individuals from the overreach of the criminal justice system, including concerns around reasonable suspicion and the presumption of innocence, the issue of doli incapax is the most relevant for young people.

The core proposition at the centre of the STMP is that the suspects being surveilled are at high risk of committing a crime, in conflict with the protection that doli incapax affords to children. Children under the age of ten have allegedly been placed on STMPs, including a child of nine who was identified first as a potential victim of family violence. The child was placed on an STMP and was subsequently charged with criminal offences on 94 occasions[46]. This case study illustrates how the ‘watch and wait’ process operates in practice, whether or not this is the intention of police. The LECC report into STMPs identified a core issue with the application of the program; namely that it has not been formulated with the needs of children in mind, despite the fact that children are overrepresented within the program[47]. The indiscriminate application to children and young people of the STMP, a risk assessment tool designed to identify adult offenders, is identified by Hall as a key component in the criminalisation of young people[48].

The most glaring and fundamental conflict between underpinning legal principles and the STMP program is with the principle of doli incapax. This conflict begins clearly with the monitoring of children to whom any iteration of doli incapax applies, not just those children under the age of ten who enjoy the full and irrefutable protection of doli incapax. It is unclear what justification the framers of the STMP program envisioned for the surveillance of any child under the age of fourteen. If the purpose of an STMP is to prevent crime from occurring, this purpose is inconsistent with the monitoring of children who are not capable of committing a crime or who should be presumed to be incapable in the first instance. Particularly where children have never before been found guilty, or even charged with or accused of a crime, their surveillance is inconsistent with the understanding of children’s relationship with crime that underpins the legal system and that doli incapax is drawn from, namely that children have a reduced ability to judge right from wrong, and serious wrongdoing from that which is ‘merely naughty’.

When this factor is combined with the overrepresentation of Aboriginal children and young people in the program[49], the question then becomes which children are allowed to be “merely naughty” and which children are seen as budding criminals, with potentially criminogenic and traumatic consequences. Critical approaches to punitive methods of juvenile justice note that “‘delinquency’ and ‘deviance’ are normal features of adolescent development”[50], but the actions of Aboriginal children, by virtue of the fact their communities are often already overpoliced and criminalised, are seen as evidence of future adult criminality, rather than ordinary adolescent boundary testing. By being allowed to operate outside the confines of criminal charges and the court system, as there is no need for a suspect who has been placed on an STMP to have ever been charged or convicted of a crime previously, the protection which is meant to be afforded to children by the principle of doli incapax is stripped away. This relates to broader systemic issues, including how Aboriginal children are perceived as more adult and more culpable for their behaviour than non-Aboriginal children. This is a bias that is rooted in colonialist narratives and which is reflected in the high number of Aboriginal children below the age of 14 who come into contact with the criminal law system and the vast overrepresentation of Aboriginal children in youth prison populations[51]. Aboriginal children between the ages of ten and twelve are 30 to 56 times more likely than non-Aboriginal children to first have contact with the criminal justice system[52].

Changes which have been implemented to the monitoring of children under 14 years of age via an STMP are inadequate and do not strike at the root issues inherent within the policy. An additional requirement that the inclusion of children under the age of 14 on the STMP database must be approved by an Assistant Commissioner does not adequately address the core question of the need for criminal surveillance of any child who still enjoys the presumption of doli incapax[53].

Policies like the STMP, which involve introducing criminal surveillance to the lives of children who have been identified as at risk, are resistant to reform by their very nature. By closely monitoring young Aboriginal people and children, behaviour that may fall within a relatively normal spectrum of the naughty or challenging is criminalised and dealt with inappropriately through the criminal justice system. Even where legal principles designed to protect children from inappropriate criminalisation within the adult criminal justice system are eventually triggered, such as doli incapax, it is often too late, as children have already faced exposure to the system on so many discrete occasions, each one compounding trauma and negative associations with the institutions involved, and each interaction serving as a potentially criminogenic one. Drawn out legal processes related to the determination of doli incapax have been identified as damaging in and of themselves, especially where children have been held on remand pending determination of their fitness to stand trial[54]. Additionally, the application of doli incapax necessarily requires an often lengthy court process, which requires the child’s participation; this is at odds with the protection from the damaging effects of the adult criminal system the concept of doli incapax is designed to provide[55]. This example simply serves to illustrate the dangers inherent within a policy like the STMP, which draw children into the criminal system; once a child is forced to interact with criminal institutions, these interactions cannot be undone, even where legal safeguards are subsequently enlivened to protect the child from further criminalisation and punishment.

IV ALTERNATIVES TO THE STMP

There is no singular recommendation in existing literature for a replacement to the STMP. The overreach of the policy and the potential for harm is so great that there should be no equivalent program to replace the STMP for young people. There is no scope for successful reform of the program, as there is no tangible benefit to the surveillance of the young people currently within the remit to the program, who pose a very low risk and many of whom are either too young to be charged with a crime, or should be protected by a presumption that they are too young to be held criminally responsible for their actions. This is not compatible with the close monitoring of youth behaviour. It is especially inappropriate in its use in regards to young people and Aboriginal people, with young Aboriginal people facing compounding disadvantage

One of the core problems of the STMP that cannot be addressed by the implementation of further diversionary programs or ‘culturally sensitive’ police programs is that a number of the children being targeted are not ‘youth offenders’ by any definition of the term. Programs to divert young people and children, particularly young Aboriginal people, are not necessary to replace the STMP for many of the children being surveilled. The nature of the close surveillance of young people creates the conditions for crimes; a number of the children being monitored may otherwise have never come back into contact with police in the course of any criminal investigation. The STMP ensures that they remain in contact with police, where they will continue to be seen as persons of interest. Preventative programs and early intervention are often presented as positive alternatives to carceral punishment and more punitive measures, even within the literature critical of the STMP[56]. However, when critically evaluated, it is clear such programs are rife with the potential for net widening [57].

The secrecy of the STMP program and the lack of disclosure to suspects that they have been placed on a surveillance list conflicts with the fundamental right to know of any criminal proceedings against oneself. It is also incompatible with the right to legal representation when facing potential legal action or interacting with the criminal justice system.

Participants are not informed they have been placed on the STMP database, nor is there any clear criteria which indicates when and why a child or adult might be placed on an STMP [58]. Additionally, there is no apparent process to seek removal from the STMP database [59].

The STMP should be replaced not by an alternative policy within the criminal law system, but by greater resourcing to social services run by and for Aboriginal people. Government run social services are not neutral for Aboriginal people; the intergenerational trauma of the Stolen Generation, ongoing child removals and the extended policing of the personal lives and finances of Aboriginal people and families through social services have naturally led to a high level of mistrust towards Government services[60]. The solution is the rejection of conventional ‘culturally sensitive’ approaches which fail to adequately centre and support Aboriginal providers of social care. Instead, full commitment is required to a model of social support for Aboriginal people which includes genuine inclusion of Aboriginal communities and elders in the design and provision of services, including a substantive role in ongoing decision making[61]. Comprehensive training for non-Aboriginal staff in the relationship between intergenerational and present day trauma due to settler colonialism is also fundamental to an improved model[62].

V CONCLUSION

The Suspect Target Management Plan is an inherently flawed policy that, by the virtue of its construction, consistently produces conditions that unavoidably lead to the criminalisation of young people and children. Reforms to aspects of the policy are inadequate, and the program should be abolished outright, at very least in its application to young people. A policy that operates entirely within the realm of predictive policing is already fraught with risk when applied to adults, and must be adequately justified with reference to the severity of the risk constituted by the targets being surveilled, the benefit to society generated by the successful application of the policy in regards to the nature and volume of crimes prevented, and the balancing of the legal rights of the target. When applied to children, the onus is far higher again. In order to justify the use of predictive policing strategies on children, the strategies employed must be demonstrably effective, and the risk and the subsequent benefit derived from the effective prevention of crime must be greater than that of programs targeted at adults. Most importantly, the care given to protecting the rights of children and young people in their formative years, where increased exposure to law enforcement and interactions with the criminal justice system have a high risk of proving criminogenic, must be extensive. The case which has been made for the effectiveness of the STMP program and the justification for its continued use does not approach this threshold.

The STMP creates the ideal conditions for the rampant criminalisation of its young targets by allowing law enforcement to employ a ‘watch and wait’ strategy, whereby any difficult, ‘anti-social’ or otherwise undesirable behaviour observed in targets has the potential to be observed through the lens of criminality by the officers tasked with the surveillance of the young person in question. The STMP creates the conditions for further crime, by necessitating the viewing of behaviour through a lens of criminality. The behaviour of the target of an STMP is no longer viewed as the behaviour of an average young person, but the behaviour of a potential adult criminal, thereby creating the conditions for likely police intervention, which in turn increase the risk of further contact with police and the criminal law system in future.

VI BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bastable, Emma and Vicki Sentas, ‘Overpolicing Indigenous youth: The suspect target management plan’ (2016) 25(3) Human Rights Defender 16

Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, Widening the Net in Juvenile Justice and the Dangers of Prevention and Early Intervention (August 2001) Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice <http://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/widening.pdf>

Councils of Social Services, Review on Raising the Age of Criminal Responsibility (2020) NSW Council of Social Services <https://www.ncoss.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/20200302_SUB_Joint-COSS_Age-of-Criminal-Responsibility_FINAL.pdf>

Fitz-Gibbon, Kate. and Wendy O’Brien, ‘A Child’s Capacity to Commit Crime: Examining the Operation of Doli Incapax in Victoria (Australia)’ (2019) 8(1) Crime Justice Journal 18

Hall, Maggie, ‘Changes in New South Wales criminal justice since 2010’ (2021) 33(2) Current Issues in Criminal Justice 264

Herring, Sigrid, Jo Spangaro, Marlene Lauw and Lorna McNamara, ‘The Intersection of Trauma, Racism, and Cultural Competence in Effective Work with Aboriginal People: Waiting for Trust’ (2013) 66 (1) Australian Social Work 104

Hunter, Fergus, ‘Controversial police program successfully reducing crime: report’, The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney), 13 October 2020 <https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/controversial-police-program-successfully-reducing-crime-report-20201012-p564d1.html>

Law Enforcement Conduct Commission, An investigation into the formulation and use of the NSW Police Force Suspect Targeting Management Plan on children and young people (January 2020) Law Enforcement Conduct Commission <https://www.lecc.nsw.gov.au/news-and-publications/publications/operation-tepito-interim-report-january-2020.pdf>

Law Society of NSW, Council of Attorneys-General Age of Criminal Responsibility Working Group Review (14 February 2020) Law Society of NSW https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5eed2d72b739c17cb0fd9b2d/t/60a395b5fa1efe2eb20c06f0/1621333438554/Law+Society+of+NSW.pdf

McGowan, Michael, ‘NSW police put children as young as nine, many of them Indigenous under surveillance’ The Guardian (Sydney) 14 February 2020 <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/feb/14/nsw-police-put-children-as-young-as-nine-many-of-them-indigenous-under-surveillance>

Morandin, Poppy, The NSW Police’s Suspect Targeting Management Plan (STMP) to Effectively Reduce Crime (31 October 2020) Criminal Defence Lawyers <https://www.criminaldefencelawyers.com.au/blog/the-nsw-polices-suspect-targeting-management-plan-stmp-to-effectively-reduce-crime/>

Parker, Sophie and Vicki Sentas, ALRC inquiry into the incarceration rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (12 September 2017) Australian Law Reform Commission <https://www.alrc.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/79._redfern_legal_centre.pdf>

Richards, Kelly, Cassandra Cross and Angela Dwyer, ‘Police perceptions of young people: a qualitative analysis’, (2019) 20(4) Police Practice & Research 360

Sentas, Vicki and Camilla Pandolfini, Policing Young People in NSW: A Study of the Suspect Targeting Management Plan. A Report of the Youth Justice Coalition NSW (2017) Youth Justice Coalition NSW <https://www.piac.asn.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/17.10.25-YJC-STMP-Report.pdf>

Watson, Ian, A critical review of the BOCSAR report: An evaluation of the Suspect Target Management Plan (9 November 2020) NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research <https://www.bocsar.nsw.gov.au/Documents/CJB233Revised/Critical%20Review%20-%20Watson.pdf>

Yeong, Steve, An evaluation of the Suspect Target Management Plan (February 2021) NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research <https://www.bocsar.nsw.gov.au/Publications/CJB/2020-Evaluation-of-the-Suspect-Target-Management-Plan-CJB233.pdf>


[1] Maggie Hall ‘Changes in New South Wales criminal justice since 2010’ (2021) 33(2) Current Issues in Criminal Justice: 264, 264.

[2] Law Enforcement Conduct Commission, An investigation into the formulation and use of the NSW Police Force Suspect Targeting Management Plan on children and young people (January 2020) Law Enforcement Conduct Commission, <https://www.lecc.nsw.gov.au/news-and-publications/publications/operation-tepito-interim-report-january-2020.pdf> 9.

[3] Vicki Sentas and Camilla Pandolfini, Policing Young People in NSW: A Study of the Suspect Targeting Management Plan. A Report of the Youth Justice Coalition NSW (2017) Youth Justice Coalition NSW, 5.

[4] Ibid.

[5] LECC (n 2), 8.

[6] Kelly Richards et al,‘Police perceptions of young people: a qualitative analysis’, (2019) 20(4) Police Practice & Research 360, 371.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Steve Yeong, An evaluation of the Suspect Target Management Plan (February 2021) NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research <https://www.bocsar.nsw.gov.au/Publications/CJB/2020-Evaluation-of-the-Suspect-Target-Management-Plan-CJB233.pdf>, 1.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Fergus Hunter, ‘Controversial police program successfully reducing crime: report’, The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney), 13 October 2020 <https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/controversial-police-program-successfully-reducing-crime-report-20201012-p564d1.html>.

[12] Ian Watson, A critical review of the BOCSAR report: An evaluation of the Suspect Target Management Plan (9 November 2020) NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research <https://www.bocsar.nsw.gov.au/Documents/CJB233Revised/Critical%20Review%20-%20Watson.pdf>.

[13] LECC (n 2).

[14] Sentas and Pandolfini (n 3) 16.

[15] Ibid 25.

[16] Ibid 1.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Emma Bastable and Vicki Sentas, ‘Overpolicing Indigenous youth: The suspect target management plan’ (2016) 25(3) Human Rights Defender 16.

[19] Poppy Morandin, The NSW Police’s Suspect Targeting Management Plan (STMP) to Effectively Reduce Crime (31 October 2020) Criminal Defence Lawyers <https://www.criminaldefencelawyers.com.au/blog/the-nsw-polices-suspect-targeting-management-plan-stmp-to-effectively-reduce-crime/>.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Sentas and Pandolfini (n 3) 1.

[22] Richards (n 6) 371.

[23] LECC (n 2) 8.

[24] Richards (n 6) 371.

[25] LECC (n 2).

[26] Richards (n 6) 371.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Ibid 360.

[29] Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, Widening the Net in Juvenile Justice and the Dangers of Prevention and Early Intervention (August 2001) Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice <http://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/widening.pdf> .

[30] Sentas and Pandolfini (n 3) 18.

[31] Ibid 19.

[32] Parker, Sophie and Vicki Sentas ALRC inquiry into the incarceration rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (12 September 2017) Australian Law Reform Commission <https://www.alrc.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/79._redfern_legal_centre.pdf> 6.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Bastable and Sentas (n 18) 16.

[35] Ibid 17.

[36] LECC (n 2) 18.

[37] Bastable and Sentas (n 18) 17.

[38] Yeong (n 8).

[39] Ibid.

[40] Hunter (n 11).

[41] LECC (n 2) 16.

[42] Bastable and Sentas (n 18) 16.

[43] Ibid 17.

[44] Ibid.

[45] Ibid.

[46] McGowan, Michael, ‘NSW police put children as young as nine, many of them Indigenous under surveillance’ The Guardian (Sydney) 14 February 2020 <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/feb/14/nsw-police-put-children-as-young-as-nine-many-of-them-indigenous-under-surveillance>.

[47] LECC (n 2) 3.

[48] Hall (n 1) 271.

[49] Sentas and Pandolfini (n 3); Yeong (n 8).

[50] Bastable and Sentas (n 18) 18.

[51] Councils of Social Services, Review on Raising the Age of Criminal Responsibility (2020) NSW Council of Social Services <https://www.ncoss.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/20200302_SUB_Joint-COSS_Age-of-Criminal-Responsibility_FINAL.pdf>.

[52] Law Society of NSW, Council of Attorneys-General Age of Criminal Responsibility Working Group Review (14 February 2020) Law Society of NSW <https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5eed2d72b739c17cb0fd9b2d/t/60a395b5fa1efe2eb20c06f0/1621333438554/Law+Society+of+NSW.pdf> 3.

[53] LECC (n 2) 15.

[54] Fitz-Gibbon, Kate. and Wendy O’Brien, ‘A Child’s Capacity to Commit Crime: Examining the Operation of Doli Incapax in Victoria (Australia)’ (2019) 8(1) Crime Justice Journal 18, 25.

[55] Ibid 27.

[56] Sentas and Pandolfini (n 3) 50.

[57] Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, Widening the Net in Juvenile Justice and the Dangers of Prevention and Early Intervention (August 2001) Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice <http://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/widening.pdf> 1.

[58] Sentas and Pandolfini (n 3) 25.

[59] Bastable and Sentas (n 18) 17.

[60] Sigrid Herring et al, ‘The Intersection of Trauma, Racism, and Cultural Competence in Effective Work with Aboriginal People: Waiting for Trust’ (2013) 66 (1) Australian Social Work 104, 107–8.

[61] Ibid 114.

[62] Ibid.


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