'Stain on our community' that kids are imprisoned

A former incarcerated woman has hit back at Australia's tough on crime policies, saying they fail children by pushing them further into poverty.

Tahlia Isaac, a charity founder and advocate for women in prison, speaking at the National Press Club on Wednesday, had a message for leaders who turn "justice into political theatre" through policies like "adult time, adult crime".

"While I talk about adult prisons having a place in our country, I want to be very clear: children's prisons have no place in our country," Ms Isaacs said.

"Our young people are not that dangerous that they need to be placed in a prison where they are further pushed into being marginalised, pushed into poverty, pushed into removal from country."

The Queensland government on Sunday announced its "adult time, adult crime" policy in which young offenders found guilty of serious crimes are charged as adults and face harsher penalties.

It added 12 new offences, bringing the total number of offences under the policy to 45.

While acknowledging communities need to be kept safe, Ms Isaacs said children's brains are not as capable of understanding consequences as adults.

"People need to feel safe in their community and know their car is not going to get stolen, but putting children in prison does not make them safer," she said.

"It makes children angry. It disenfranchises them from making any kind of decisions about their life. "It also funnels them into adult prisons, and it is a stain on our community that we lock up children as young as 10 years old."

The 35-year-old criminologist and founder of charity Project Herself is working to change the justice system by supporting vulnerable women, after she rebuilt her own life after being sentenced to two years in jail for dealing drugs.

"No one is ever better off after having contact with our justice system, and it's a failure we should be ashamed of," she said.

"We fail victims, we fail children, we fail taxpayers, and we fail communities."

She said community safety had been confused with and replaced by punishment, with justice turned into a vote-buying strategy rather than keeping victims and communities safe.

Prisons were necessary, but in many cases they were not the answer, Ms Isaac said.

"Holding people to account does not have to equal punishment," she said.

"Women who cause harm to others need to be given the proper resources to ensure they don't continue to do harm."

Ms Isaacs said she once shared a cell with a woman imprisoned for driving on a suspended licence.

And as an advocate, she had talked with women who had been charged for stealing food to feed their children.

Such women often lost their jobs, their homes and custody of their children in the process, forcing them into poverty or a cycle of offending, she said.

The woman should have been held accountable for her actions through education, reflection of her behaviour and been given the resources to ensure she did not reoffend, Ms Isaac said.

"A much cheaper, relational and practical way of handling breaches of our social contract," she said.

"Stopping cycles of disadvantage and incarceration starts with supporting women to stay out of our justice system."

Ms Isaac was released from prison in 2019.

Project Herself is a charity that helps women rebuild their lives after they have been released from prison.

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