Naughty Victorian Teen Can't Use TikTok But Can Get 25 Years Non-Parole Because That's The World We Live In Now

ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact

Authorities in Victoria have today confirmed that a child who is not mature enough to run a TikTok account without government supervision is, however, considered mature enough to be tried in an adult court and sentenced to up to 25 years non-parole if they act out on impulse.

This comes as a new suite of reforms from Spring Street attempts to solve a complex social crisis by punishing the end result instead of addressing any of the factors that create it.

Under the Adult Time for Violent Crime package, children as young as fourteen will soon be eligible for adult sentences for a range of serious offences. Critics say the government appears to believe adolescence is far too delicate for social media but somehow robust enough for the full weight of the adult criminal justice system.

"Kids are not allowed TikTok because they are vulnerable to manipulation and lack emotional control," said one youth worker.

"But if they lash out after ten years of instability, poverty or trauma, suddenly they are criminal masterminds and should be locked up until they're bent and old. Apparently, this is consistent public policy." they added.

While the Premier insists the measures target only the worst offenders, frontline workers say those "worst offenders" are almost always the same demographic. They are overwhelmingly from poor families, migrant families and Aboriginal communities. They are kids who have been couch surfing since Year 5. Kids who have been exposed to violence since before they were eating solids. Kids with untreated developmental disorders who never stood a chance in a classroom that does not have the resources to managed them.

These workers argue that the state's refusal to invest properly in prevention has created a conveyor belt where disadvantaged children move seamlessly from child protection to youth justice to adult custody. They say the reforms do nothing to break that cycle and instead harden it and destroy society's most vulnerable, when it is our civic duty to protect them.

"The problem is not TikTok. It is not cheap machetes. It is not whatever today's headline villain is. The problem is that these kids are raised in environments that none of us would survive," said another community advocate.

"Punishing the outcome instead of fixing the cause will not make Victoria safer. It will just forsake more young people who were already hanging by a thread."

Economists have also warned that long adult sentences for children will increase recidivism and cost taxpayers hundreds of millions while doing nothing to address the instability, trauma and poverty that produce youth crime in the first place.

Despite this, both sides of politics appear to agree that punishment is the quickest route to a headline and the safest way to look busy. That prevention requires money, patience, courage and long term thinking. Something our state and federal representatives often lack. And that rehabilitation does not win elections.

As one legal observer noted this morning, the state has now reached a bizarre consensus where a fourteen year old is too fragile for an algorithm but apparently sturdy enough for a maximum security facility.

"Childhood in Victoria is now a Schrödinger’s box. You are either a vulnerable innocent brain that cannot handle an app where people might encourage you to steal some bloke's car and write it off for him, or you are a hardened adult offender who deserves life behind bars. It depends entirely on what sells better in the papers that week," they said.

"This is the world we live in."

More to come.