The Missing Seat Editorial
When Children Are Treated Like Criminals
A United Nations committee warned that Indigenous children in Australia continue to face systemic racial discrimination in the criminal-justice system.
They are arrested, detained and imprisoned at far higher rates than non-Indigenous children.
The phrase “systemic discrimination” means the problem is larger than one prejudiced officer or one unfair judge. It can be produced by the way schools, police, courts, child-protection systems and detention rules work together.
Children do not enter the system from equal starting points
Indigenous communities in Australia have lived through colonization, removal from land, family separation and government policies designed to control their lives and cultures.
Those harms did not disappear when the policies changed. Their effects can remain in family disruption, poverty, mistrust of government, unequal services and limited access to culturally appropriate support.
That history does not mean every offense should be ignored. It means governments should not treat the final act as if nothing happened before it.
A child watched more closely, punished more harshly at school or denied early support is more likely to reach the justice system. Once there, detention can interrupt education, damage mental health and make later stability more difficult.
Punishment can deepen the problem
Locking up a child may temporarily remove the child from the community. It does not automatically address trauma, family instability, disability, addiction, school exclusion or lack of safe housing.
If those conditions remain unchanged, detention may return the child to the same situation with additional harm and fewer opportunities.
Public safety matters. So does whether the response actually makes the public safer.
Who had power and who carried the burden?
Governments designed the laws, funded the institutions and decided when children could be detained. Indigenous children and families carried the consequences.
Indigenous-led organizations often understand what their communities need, but they may receive less authority and less stable funding than government systems that repeatedly fail.
Why should an ordinary person care?
How a country treats children with the least power shows what its promises are worth.
Children make mistakes. Some cause serious harm. But a justice system should still recognize that children are developing and capable of change. Treating a child as permanently dangerous can help create the future the system claims it is preventing.
Pull Up a Chair
Learn who sets the minimum age of criminal responsibility in your state or territory and what alternatives to detention exist.
Support Indigenous-led youth programs, legal services and community-controlled organizations. Ask whether public money is producing safer communities or simply paying to detain more children.
Demand public data showing who is arrested, why, for how long and what happens after release.
A child should not lose their future because every institution around them failed first.
Who is missing?
Ally = Action. 🪑