Brendon Crompton: Blue Light CEO on the need for more prevention work to crackdown on youth crime

There's a view police need back-up, following the revelations more prevention work is needed for the Government to deliver its youth crime crackdown. 

It aims to reduce the number of serious youth offenders by 15% by 2030. 

Official briefings show the Police Minister was told this was ambitious and would require cross-agency work. 

Blue Light Chief Executive Brendon Crompton told Mike Hosking that Police are there to enforce the law. 

He says provider agencies then give services and support to those who've offended. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Back to youth crime. The target is to reduce it
by fifteen percent, but ministerial briefing papers we got this
morning show the Minister is potentially not doing enough to
reach it. Too much is being expected to police, apparently
not on our focus being given to the role of
partner agencies like OT and youth support providers. Blue Light
CEO Brendan Crompton back with us. Brendan, very good morning
to you.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hey, good morning, Mike. How are you.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
I'm very well indeed, thank you. So the police intervene,
the argument being they need back up, would that broadly
be your view of matters?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah, absolutely, as you know on my expliceman myself. So yeah,
the pleasure there to do enforcement day you plan to
get the young person into court or into a family
group conference and then order on company and its providers,
of which we are. We provide services to young people
who offended production doing this for thirty years. We do
that in community support for those young people.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
It's important to point out Mark Mitchell, the Minister concern
points out they've got all the resources they need, so
he said, he said, anyway, how much of the crime
in your view or experience requires intensive levels and intervention
as opposed to a clip round the ear may be
a change, maybe maybe something of the kids straightened out.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah, well I suppose mikeel I listen often to the
to your radio station. People going to really mention all
the kids that we deal with have that the same
one with three of these factors. The failed mainstream education,
so they're not in school or any sort of training.
The second factor they have just dysfunctional family and friends.
So there's family violence, criminality, drugs, alcohol, certainly no positive

(01:26):
role are male role models. And they're not in anything organized,
so they're not in clubs, they're not in church or
sports or kappahucker. And there's fantastic examples of the kids have
offended who have been brought into a sports team or
boxing or all those examples that you get and they
no longer offend. So all those all those things we
can identify at primary school. And so when people talk
about early intervention, I've been doing us for thirty years

(01:48):
that we've always known that, but no one puts money.
You know that. All the government agencies talk about early intervention,
and the police unfortunately, their job's not to do early intervention.
Their jobs the police and then people point the finger
of them when you crimes high. But free work's not
be getting done. And there's lots of programs. If you
look at the military boot camps, whatever you want to
call it, if you actually look at the pillars of

(02:09):
what they're teaching the kids, respect for yourself, respect for others, commitment, motivation, routine.
You have to get up in the morning, make your bed,
spend the day engaged. That's pretty good if you want
to get a job. Our teamwork and they will work
on health and well beings. So the extra what the
program is. I think people need to stop focusing on
the name and actually say, well, this is what we're
trying to do. But that intensive support that they're going

(02:30):
to get way deep into the cycle of offending. So
the intervention is coming, but that early stuff has never
been earlier.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Yeah, good insight, Brandon, as always appreciated Brandon Crompton, who's
the Blue Lights CEO.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
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