Kyzar Jing shares a similar childhood of domestic violence and poverty to many teenagers involved in crime in the New England region, where car thefts and home break-ins are rampant in places such as Tamworth and Gunnedah.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
However, what is different in Mr Jing's case is that he was locked-up in the Frank Baxter Youth Justice Centre near Gosford on the NSW Central Coast for 4.5 years from the age of 15.
Whereas, one of the often-heard complaints among locals in Tamworth, Gunnedah and other areas with high numbers of youth crime, is that minors get a "slap on the wrist" and are sent back out into the community only to re-offend.
Mr Jing was one of the rare few who used his time in youth detention to turn his life around and today works as a spokesperson for ConFit, mentoring others who have lived a similar experience to him.
Yet, the 21-year-old said locking children and teenagers in a correctional centre was not the answer, due to the rates of recidivism - the number of those who return.
About 82 per cent of those 10 to 16-year-olds who are released from sentenced detention return within 12 months, according to the latest statistics from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).
Instead, Mr Jing said there needed to be more focus on early intervention measures, saying "once a kid commits crime, it doesn't become an intervention anymore".
"Once a kid is already doing something, it becomes a deterrence," he said of the need to step-in within the first couple of years of a child's life when they were learning and growing the most.
However, he said parents needed to become a part of the solution by getting help and educating themselves.
"People have got to be self conscious and self aware of how their actions not only affect themselves, but everyone else around them," Mr Jing said.
It costs Australian taxpayers $2700 on average every day to keep a child or teenager in juvenile detention, Michael Tidball from the Department of Communities and Justice told budget estimates on November 1.
Currently, there are 212 young people locked up nationally, including 129 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Mr Jing said instead of spending nearly $1 million a year on each kid in youth detention, a wiser way would be to send the children and the parents to a weekly psychologist.
"To get a child a psychologist appointment maybe once a week from the age two to five, and one for the parents.... what will that cost? Maybe $20,000 per year?"
Every one needs that one person in their life to support them and believe in them. If they don't have that, just be patient and it will come.
- Kyzar Jing
Kyzar Jing's story
Mr Jing does not like to go into too much detail about the crimes that landed him with a nearly five-year stint in juvenile detention, but says his early years were filled with domestic violence and poverty in Sydney.
"I grew up seeing a lot of antisocial behaviour from my family, people around me, and all that negativity and those bad behaviours, which I was having at a young age, influenced me," he said of seeing his mother get belted by his father.
"As I got older, the repercussions of all that stuff I was seeing at a young age, led me to doing some stuff as a young person... and I ended up in a youth detention centre at age 15 to 20."
And he said he started stealing food to survive, which led to even bigger crimes, with five armed robberies and a carjacking, leading to a nine-year sentence with 4.5 years non-parole.
Speaking about the youth crime in regional areas, such as Tamworth and Gunnedah, Mr Jing said. "these kids are coming from broken homes, from trauma".
"They're either getting bashed by their parents, or they're watching their parents bashing each other, or their parents are junkies. How can you expect the young person to stay inside their house, when there's all this trauma, they want to run away from it.
"It's unfortunate that the best thing in the state at the moment for young people doing crime is youth detention, it shouldn't be like that... there needs to be more focus on early intervention."
Mr Jing told his story to about 100 people gathered in Gunnedah for the two-day Crime Prevention and Community Safety Conference on November 23 and 24, in an attempt to find solutions to the crime issue in the New England region.
Tamworth-based Centacare's Fallon Roberts said they have received "a range of children" through their Youth on Track (YoT) and Keep on Track programs (KoT) for those who are currently, or just starting, to commit offences.
"The young people we work with face a mixture of complex social issues. These can include domestic and family violence, mental health, substance dependency, neglect and family dysfunction," Ms Roberts said.
"Although a high number of our young people come from family situations that involve family and domestic violence, there are many other factors contributing to their anti-social behaviours.
"There are a multitude of issues these young people are facing, family and domestic violence is one of them."
Kids Help Line 1800 55 1800
Lifeline 13 11 14
Domestic Violence Hotline - 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)
Aboriginal Counselling Services 0410 539 905
Elder Abuse Hotline 1300 651 192
Mens Referral Service 1300 766 491
Mens Line 1300 789 978
