Potential “life-saving” laws that give the Youth Court the power to detain drug-dependent children for treatment will be enforced later this year, but under a different model to what the Marshall Government promised ahead of the last state election.
Young people detained at Adelaide’s youth justice centre have been unable to go to school or attend medical appointments while the government deals with a “significant” staffing shortage, union officials and advocates claim.
Attorney-General Vickie Chapman says South Australia needs to find other ways to manage young offenders before it lifts the age of criminal responsibility, amid growing calls to stop children aged as young as 10 from being arrested and charged.
Children in state care who end up in the youth justice system are sometimes kept in detention days after they are granted release because child protection authorities have no homes for them to go to, according to South Australia’s Guardian for Children.