What is Tamworth council doing to tackle youth crime in the region?

Youth crime emerged as a major topic at a crime conference in Gunnedah near the end of 2023, as BOCSAR statistics were presented showing young offenders make up 20 per cent of car thefts and property crime in the New England and North West, compared to 10 per cent across all of regional NSW.

Oxley police have been working to tackle youth crime in the region through resource-intense initiatives like Operation Mongoose which was credited for achieving a slight decrease in stolen cars last year.

But Tamworth Regional Council wants the state government to go a step further and fund programs that will help prevent young people from running afoul of the law in the first place.

"As a general rule across the region, we want to get youths that are disengaged - disengaged from school, disengaged from their families, disengaged from society - engaged in something that will help them become good citizens," Tamworth mayor Russell Webb recently told the Leader.

"I think it's very important to identify those young ones that need help and take that next step."

Cr Webb pointed to Armidale's BackTrack organisation as an example of a program that could be reproduced in Tamworth given enough funding and community support.

BackTrack Youth Works operates a 'holistic' model that offers young people everything from a referral to a home, alternative education and support into a job.

Last year council adopted a new five-year Community Safety and Crime Prevention Plan which focuses heavily on community engagement, education, and "diversion programs" for at-risk youth.

But councillor Mark Rodda, chair of the Tamworth Community Safety Working Group, said he's worried the proposed youth programs will be stuck in the planning phase indefinitely without adequate state government support.

"I think the will of respective state governments has not been there to address the impact of crime," he recently told the Leader.

"Measures to steer people away from a life of crime have obviously been considered too expensive, and I find that sad."

He said there were limits to what the local government can achieve in tackling not just youth crime, but overall crime as well since crime prevention is primarily the responsibility of state and territory governments.

"The problem with the working group, and for council generally, is we act mostly as an advocacy group. All we can do is make recommendations and ask questions to other tiers of government," Cr Rodda said.

"In terms of getting legislative changes to address the causes of youth crime, I think we're very far away from achieving anything in that space."

On the plus side, he said, council and the working group have been successful in expanding the city's CCTV to "strategic locations" identified by the police.

These measures have often been touted as the most effective way Tamworth council can support police and deter criminal activity.

But Cr Rodda says a more comprehensive approach will be needed to tackle youth crime long-term.

"Personally, I want a review of the young offenders act of 1997 because I don't think it's kept up with the pace of changes to crime generally in Tamworth and the region," Cr Rodda said.

"The date itself tells you that it's a bit old, and probably a bit out of touch with current crime trends, and I've spoken to a lot of police who are quite frustrated about youth crime generally and how it's managed."

Cr Rodda said he's "sympathetic" to the view that the act is too lenient on young perpetrators, and that if gaol is not the answer, then the state government must invest in a range of local youth programs instead.

"I think it's safe to say there's a legislative disconnect between when the police catch these young kids and the process of handing it over to the courts," he said.

"The thinking is that if they go to prison they'll learn even worse behaviour from older inmates in those institutions, but ultimately if they're not going to do that governments need to spend more money on programs that steer them away from that lifestyle and address the root causes of that behaviour."

The councillor pointed to family violence and poverty as some of the major root causes, issues which have been worsening across the region in recent months.