Emotions were running high in the Australian town of Alice Springs this week when mourners attending the funeral of an 18-year-old man attacked its oldest pub, smashing windows and kicking doors. <\/p>\n
For Northern Territory officials, Tuesday\u2019s violence \u2013 and clashes later that night involving around 150 people armed with axes, machetes and knives \u2013 was the final straw. <\/p>\n
\u201cEnough is enough,\u201d Chief Minister Eva Lawler said Wednesday, as she announced a two-week curfew for children between 6 p.m and 6 a.m in the central business district. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf someone is under the age of 18 and they\u2019re seen out in the town center, they will be taken home or taken to a safe place. Kids are not safe on the street,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Since then, relative calm has returned to Alice Springs, or Mparntwe, its traditional name. But debate has raged over the effectiveness of the emergency measures that some described as a knee-jerk response to complex social issues. <\/p>\n
Some Indigenous groups and leaders have backed the action as a necessary circuit-breaker, but others say what local children need is support, not more policing in a country with a low age of criminal responsibility and high rates of\u00a0incarceration for Indigenous youth. <\/p>\n
Northern Territory officials said the trigger for Tuesday\u2019s violence occurred three weeks ago when an 18-year-old man died in a car accident during the early hours of March 8. <\/p>\n
At the time, local news reports said he was sitting on a door of a suspected stolen vehicle, when it turned a corner and rolled on top of him. Eight people fled the scene. <\/p>\n
Darren Clark, founder of community group Action for Alice, said youths rampaged through the town on Tuesday smashing windows before attacking the Todd Tavern, a well-known hotel and bar. <\/p>\n
He said the group appeared to be seeking retribution. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re looking for the driver of the car \u2026 So, that\u2019s what this is all about,\u201d Clark told radio station 2GB Sydney. <\/p>\n
According to police, the mourners in Alice Springs came from Utopia, a region around 230 kilometers (143 miles) to the north-east that\u2019s home to several large Aboriginal communities. <\/p>\n
It was named Utopia by German settlers, who were said to have been fascinated by the abundance of rabbits that were easy to catch. It\u2019s now known as a hub for Indigenous artists whose work is sold worldwide. <\/p>\n
Utopia suffers many of the same problems seen in Indigenous communities nationwide \u2013 overcrowded housing and high levels of domestic violence, unemployment and alcohol abuse. <\/p>\n
The issues are widely considered to be the legacy of colonization more than two centuries ago that deprived traditional owners of their ancestral lands. <\/p>\n
Decades of racism and neglect erupted on the streets of Alice Springs on Tuesday, though youth crime is a problem in many other Australian cities. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an issue that is absolutely complex. I know people don\u2019t always like to hear the word complex, but when you see young people who have fetal alcohol [syndrome], that have trauma, that have experienced domestic violence, that go to homes where there\u2019s alcohol, they\u2019re not cared for. Those are the issues that are part of the story of Alice Springs,\u201d Lawler said. <\/p>\n
Alice Springs Mayor Matt Paterson told 10 program \u201cThe Project\u201d that some children are on the streets at night because it\u2019s safer than being at home. <\/p>\n
\u201cThese children are out here because there\u2019s drunk parents, or there\u2019s family and sexual violence happening at home,\u201d he said. \u201cIf this curfew saves kids\u2019 lives because it takes it gives the police the power to take them to safe places, then I think that it\u2019s absolutely worth it.\u201d <\/p>\n
Some Indigenous leaders support the curfew and are working with the government to implement it, but other groups say there hasn\u2019t been enough consultation. <\/p>\n
Jared Sharp, Principal Legal officer of the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency (NAAJA), told Sky News the curfew could make matters worse. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere is nowhere in the world that has said that a youth curfew is effective \u2013 it just criminalizes young people. It ensnares young people in the justice system, and that\u2019s just not what we need in a place like Alice Springs, where the rates of Aboriginal people in jail and youth detention are already off the charts,\u201d Sharp said. <\/p>\n
Last August, the Northern Territory became the first Australian jurisdiction to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12. According to the latest government figures, on an average night in the June quarter of 2023, more than 800 children were in detention across Australia \u2013 60% were of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent. The figures show Indigenous children are 29 times as likely to be in detention than non-Indigenous youth. <\/p>\n
Writing in the Guardian, Catherine Liddle, CEO of the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care (SNAICC), said Indigenous children are being exposed to unacceptable levels of violence. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot arrest our way out of this,\u201d she wrote. \u201cAlcohol and substance abuse is a symptom as well as one of the drivers and it is not the only one \u2026 It is no accident that we are seeing youth crime escalating as rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child removals grow.\u201d <\/p>\n
Sixty more police arrived in Alice Springs this week to build a more visible police presence during the curfew period, and police liquor inspectors were allocated to patrol liquor stores in the area. <\/p>\n
Addressing the media on Thursday, Northern Territory Police Commissioner Michael Murphy said the measures weren\u2019t about \u201clocking up kids.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThe objective is to keep kids out of the criminal justice system,\u201d he said. \u201cIf they do commit violent crime, they will be arrested and taken to the court where they can answer to a judge and go through the justice system.\u201d <\/p>\n
In the early hours of Friday, three youths aged 12, 13 and 17 were arrested in Alice Springs after allegedly entering a home with weapons and threatening one of the residents with a firearm, according to police. They allegedly stole keys to two cars that were later found abandoned south of the town\u2019s business district. <\/p>\n
Children in the Northern Territory are due to go on school holiday next Friday \u2013 the curfew is expected to cover at least part of the break,\u00a0but territory officials haven\u2019t ruled out extending it, if needed. <\/p>\n\n
Emotions were running high in the Australian town of Alice Springs this week when mourners attending the funeral of an 18-year-old man attacked its oldest pub, smashing windows and kicking doors. For Northern Territory officials, Tuesday\u2019s violence \u2013 and clashes later that night involving around 150 people armed with axes, machetes and knives \u2013 was <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":17436,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17435","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}