
Rethinking Responses to Youth Offending: A Trauma-Informed Approach
Nikki Butler, 24 November 2024
Youth offending is a complex issue, often with roots deeply embedded in trauma. Research consistently shows a strong correlation between youth offending and adverse childhood experiences, including child abuse and neglect, domestic and family violence (DFV), parental addiction, and parental incarceration.
Why Trauma Matters in Addressing Youth Offending
Trauma affects a young person’s health and development across all domains of wellbeing, including brain health, emotional regulation, social and cognitive functioning, self-efficacy and mental health. The cumulative effects of harmful experiences shape behaviours, thought patterns, and coping mechanisms, which often contribute to pathways of offending. Effective responses to youth offending require a shift in perspective. Instead of seeing young people as criminals who need to be locked up for their behaviours, we need to shift our view to recognising these young people are individuals in need of care, nurture, protection, and support in healing from trauma.
A Whole-of-Society Approach
Preventing youth offending requires a multi-tiered strategy that addresses both root causes and immediate needs.
1. Primary Prevention: Educating and Empowering Communities
- Educate communities and policymakers about adverse childhood experiences and trauma, emphasising the need for early identification and response.
- Focus on nurturing child development from pre-birth to adolescent years.
- Advance child-safe communities with resources for parents, free parenting education, and adequate financial support.
- Integrate mindfulness and emotional regulation activities into educational programs to support mind-body calmness, resilience and coherence. Mindfulness can help young people make better decisions and reduce impulsivity linked to offending behaviors.
2. Secondary Prevention: Supporting Families in Need
- Provide accessible resources for families experiencing complexities, removing the stigma of seeking help.
- Ensure all children and adults in Australia with a disability have access to targeted interventions to support their development and wellbeing.
- Expand support for children and families who face systemic barriers, including barriers due to immigration status.
- Appropriately resource government and community services, working in the area of domestic and family violence, disability, addiction, family support, out of home care, community, wellbeing and child protection.
3. Tertiary Prevention: Breaking the Cycle of Offending
Youth detention has a compounding trauma effect. Locking children up in cells from the age of 10 years of age does not result in positive outcomes, at individual, family or community levels. Reoffending rates highlight the ineffectiveness of punitive approaches. Instead, we should:
- Shift from incarceration to therapeutic, trauma-informed residential and home-based settings.
- Recognise youth offending as a cry for help, offering care, protection, and tailored support.
- Provide mental health support that identifies, understands and responds effectively to underlying trauma.
- Eliminate barriers to mental health support, ensuring no young person is turned away for not being “unwell enough.”
- Provide self-efficacy programs and interventions to increase self-worth, resilience and belonging.
- Integrate mindfulness, heart coherence and emotional regulation activities into interventions to reduce the effects of trauma and support healing.
- Create safe pathways for children and young people to communicate their experiences and release trauma related to violence within the home, abuse and neglect.
Reimagining Intervention: Trauma-Informed Solutions
“What if we…
- Redefine our approach to youth offending?
- Tell young people, that regardless of their life experiences and behaviours, we believe in them and their potential for a beautiful, successful and optimistic life?
- Offer safe, nurturing environments where children and young people can release and heal from trauma, learn, and grow?
- Focus on forgiveness and collaboration, addressing needs and fears rather than punishing young people for their mistakes?”
Learning from Success: Effective Initiatives
Across the globe a variety of programs have demonstrated success in reducing youth offending and supporting young people:
Multi-Systemic Therapy: Addresses the multiple individual, family and community factors influencing adolescent behavior, identifies needs and strengths, and links young people with positive and healthy social connections.
Youth Justice and Diversion Strategies: Redirects young people from the criminal justice system into supportive programs.
Drug Rehabilitation Programs: Provides tailored support for young people experiencing addiction. It is well-known that substance use is often an emotional band-aid, to feel better about life, gain a sense of belonging, and to numb out the emotional effects of trauma. Since addiction can lead to offending behaviours, it is imperative that addiction is responded to from a trauma-informed and non-judgmental lens.
Restorative Justice: Facilitates reconciliation and accountability from a trauma-informed and healing-centered approach.
The Path Forward
Youth offending is not an individual problem – it reflects systemic issues in how children, families, and communities are resourced and supported. By changing the narrative and progressing trauma-informed approaches, embodied trauma can be released and healed, cycles of harm and addiction can be broken, offending and reoffending can be prevented, and young people can be empowered to build meaningful, hopeful, successful and happy lives.
The best time to rethink our attitudes, judgements and responses to youth offending has already past, the next best time is NOW. Not only are the lives and futures of young people at significant risk of ongoing poor life and health outcomes, but the whole of society also experiences the flow-on effects.
Is your service ready to understand youth offending from a trauma-informed approach?
Understanding youth offending from a trauma-informed lens is crucial for all professionals working in child, adolescent and family services, including domestic and family violence, mental health, addiction, child protection, out of home care and first response. Contact us to explore how our transformative training can support your organisation. We offer flexible delivery options, including in-person or online, to meet the unique needs of your organisation.