On behalf of the Multicultural Youth Advocacy Network (MYAN), Australia’s national peak body representing young people from migrant and refugee backgrounds, we welcome the opportunity to contribute to the Inquiry into Australia’s Youth Justice and Incarceration System.
Multicultural young people remain significantly over represented in Australia’s youth justice systems, often due to systemic inequities, racism, structural disadvantage, trauma, and a lack of culturally informed supports, not higher rates of offending. As Centre for Multicultural Youth (CMY) outlines, these patterns reflect “a system that is not working for multicultural young people.”
Data also shows that 39% of children in youth justice are culturally and linguistically diverse, a figure that should compel urgent national action to redress this. This submission presents a compelling case for a national, rights-based, evidence-driven approach to youth justice, one that invests in proven community-led interventions (such as CMY’s YRIPP and Target Zero initiatives), strengthens prevention and diversion, and ends the reliance on incarceration as an early intervention tool.
