Over-criminalisation is one driver of over-representation. A person or group is over or over-criminalised if they experience inappropriate, unnecessary or unjustified punishment, exclusion or imprisonment.

Over-policing is a common form of over-criminalisation. Over-represented children and young people are likely to be victims of over-policing due to racial profiling, increased police operations in multicultural and low-income LGAs, and reliance on police in residential care and education settings.

Lack of access to alternative responses is another example, particularly where young people from over-represented communities are denied access to warnings, cautions, diversion, proceedings by way of summons, bail or parole in lieu of another, more punitive response.

Exclusionary discipline in education is also a form of over-criminalisation. Exclusionary discipline in school settings includes formal suspension and expulsion, but also, increasingly, the problem of 'soft expulsion', by which young people are asked to leave a school or otherwise made to feel unwelcome, but do not go through a formal expulsion process.

Exclusion from public space is a form of over-criminalisation that has become particularly problematic in the wake of increased private security and PSO operations in shopping centres, and community spaces such as libraries.

Under-serving describes the practice by which children and young people who are over-represented in the criminal justice system are under-served when it comes to accessing basic supports, entitlements and therapeutic services.

Education is a critical area of under-serving for over-represented young people, who have lower year 12 attainment than their peers, and are less likely to receive support in the classroom.

Access to physical and mental health services is another critical area of under-serving. Consistently, young people from over-represented communities are not given access to culturally safe and inclusive mental health care. This are of under-serving is particularly problematic given 58% of young people in custody have a diagnosed mental illness and 33% have a history of self-harm, suicidal ideation or suicide attempts.

Employment is a consistent issue for young people from over-represented communities, who often face discrimination in the job market due to structural racism, intergenerational poverty, and geographical isolation, among other factors.

Access to support as victims of crime is a common area of under-serving and service exclusion for over-represented young people, who evidence shows are overwhelmingly victims of crime. Available data indicates that 44% of young people in custody have experienced family violence and 63% were a victim of trauma, abuse and neglect as a child.

Access to safe, secure housing often evades over-represented young people and their families. Service data and practice expertise indicate a strong overlap between young people's experiences of homelessness or housing insecurity, family violence, and criminalisation.

First Nations children and young people belong to the longest surviving continuous culture on this planet, and show strong leadership, both locally and globally, in fighting for the right to self-determination, support and access to justice. First Nations communities, including First Nations children and young people, have continually demonstrated the importance of community-led, restorative and anti-colonial approaches to justice. Our work as a coalition is indebted to the knowledge, creativity and generosity of our First Nations colleagues and of the Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations that form part of our coalition membership.

Across the country, and in Victoria, First Nations children and young people are shamefully over-represented in police and prison contact. Their over-representation is a product of the ongoing impacts of colonisation, state-sanctioned violence, child removal, racial profiling and systemic exclusion from meaningful, culturally safe therapeutic supports.

Self-determination and connection to culture are not only central to the rights of First Nations children and young people, but are also a strong preventative factor for contact with the criminal justice system.

Multicultural children and young people are critically important and valued members of the Victorian community, recognised for their unique knowledge, strength, skills and culture. While many multicultural and multifaith communities experience service exclusion and structural racism, the effects of over-criminalisation are disproportionately experienced by particular groups of multicultural children and young people. Currently, African, Māori and Pasifika, and Burmese young people are the most critically over-represented in Victoria's youth prisons.

The over-criminalisation of these communities is a direct result of structural racism, manifesting in a range of policies and practices, including racial profiling by police, racialised media reporting about "youth crime", exclusion from education and employment and inter-generational economic exclusion. While specific data about the over-representation of these communities is limited, evidence including the Centre Against Racial Profiling's Racial Profiling Data Monitoring Project demonstrates the acute impacts of racial profiling on these groups. Similarly, the United Nations’ preliminary findings into the treatment of African people in Australia paints a grim picture of discrimination at every single point across education, health, employment and housing.

Children and young people living in residential home care demonstrate leadership in championing the importance of lived-experience expertise, and of rights-based approaches to working with children and young people in state care. Often, these children and young people have been responsible for their own safety, and the safety of their siblings and adult co-victims from a very young age, without having their strength and resilience recognised by the adults around them.

Overwhelmingly, children and young people living in residential care have not only experienced the trauma of being removed from their family, but are victim-survivors of both family violence and systemic violence within the Child Protection system. Children and young people living in residential care experience critical levels of over-policing. The Sentencing Advisory Council's seminal Crossover Kids report demonstrated the frequency with which, in the residential care context, developmentally normal behaviours are met with a police response that is not only criminalising, but denies young people in residential care the opportunity to develop emotional regulation skills.

Girls and young women with complex needs often present to the service system with long histories of resilience, resourcefulness and resistance in the face of cyclical abuse and neglect. These girls and young women often have caring responsibilities of their own, and continually demonstrate strong capacity to navigate these responsibilities with strength and compassion.

'Complex needs' in this context points not to a particular trait or pathology on the part of over-represented girls and young women, but to the overwhelming frequency with which girls and young women experiencing criminalisation are survivors of sexual and family violence, and have histories of untreated mental ill-health and trauma. Criminalised girls and young women are also more likely to have experienced Child Protection involvement than their male counterparts, and frequently have unmet needs relating to alcohol and drug use.

Girls and young women, as a minority within the youth justice system, are often an after-thought when it comes to systemic reform, which frequently fails to recognise the gendered impacts of criminalisation.

Victoria’s overall youth incarceration rate is falling, but certain young people still come into contact with the justice system at disproportionately high rates.

They are over-represented in police contacts and youth detention, and they are under-served by government and community services. Victoria’s criminal justice system, and the systems that operate alongside it, are not working for these young people.

Vision

A Victoria where all young people, their families and community can get the care, support and opportunities they need to flourish in life.

Impact

To end the over-representation of the five identified youth cohorts:

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children
• Children who live in out-of-home residential care
• Multicultural children
• 18 to 25-year-olds
• Girls and young women with complex needs

In the Victorian criminal legal system through the implementation of all 49 actions in the Working Together Action Plan.