A new project is aiming to prevent young people in the west from falling into a life of crime.
Westjustice and the Centre for Multicultural Youth have announced the Paul Ramsay Foundation (PRF) will fund their ground-breaking Target Zero project, a $7.5 million funding partnership over the next five years to enable a coalition to work together to support young people and their families to thrive, achieve their full potential and avoid the criminal justice system and the revolving doors of the courtroom.
Target Zero will bring together partners from different parts of the community to end the criminalisation of young people aged 10 to 25 in the Brimbank, Wyndham and Melton municipalities.
It also seeks to address the over-representation in the criminal justice system of First Nations young people, multicultural young people, and young people in residential care.
Westjustice chief executive Melissa Hardham said Target Zero’s partnership with PRF was a step forward in addressing Victoria’s revolving door youth justice system for young people experiencing disadvantage.
Westjustice’s youth law program legal director Anoushka Jeronimus said the funding is a game changer.
Through Westjustice’s youth law program and partnership work, she and her team are constantly confronted with the difficult realities and complex disadvantages experienced by young people and their families within these communities, and the number of challenges they face just to stay healthy and safe.
“Target Zero partners believe that the issues affecting criminalised and over-represented western suburbs young people can only be solved by everyone working together on the root causes and critically, with the communities most impacted,” Ms Jeronimus said.
“In a first, Target Zero is bringing together all facets of the community to work towards ending youth criminalisation and over-representation.”
Centre for Multicultural Youth chief executive Carmel Guerra echoed this sentiment.
“Young people in Melbourne’s west should be in schools and in jobs, not jails,” she said.
“We know from our work with multicultural young people and communities that a new game plan is needed, to effectively tackle the criminalisation and over-representation of particular cohorts of young people in our justice system.”
