\n<\/p>\n
E<\/span>lijah* tried to keep out of trouble when he got out of lock up. A new path seemed within reach but he was torn. \u201cIt was so mixed feelings,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI wanted to change my life but I had a bunch of stuff on me \u2026 it was like two things fighting at once.\u201d<\/p>\n Within weeks, the teenager, who had previously been swept up in burglaries, had joined one of Melbourne\u2019s youth gangs. Things escalated from there.<\/p>\n The stabbing deaths of 15-year-old Dau Akueng and 12-year-old Chol Achiek in Melbourne\u2019s west earlier this month have fuelled debate about knife crime and youth offending in Victoria.<\/p>\n Youth crime is nothing new, but people working with young offenders in the state say the nature of offending has changed. Crime prevention programs say they are frequently referred children whose offences include carjacking, aggravated burglaries and carrying weapons.<\/p>\n Children comprised 1,128 of the 5,400 serial repeat offenders responsible for 40% of crime in Victoria last financial year, police said this week. The youth offenders were arrested a combined 7,118 times.<\/p>\n Victoria police have charged eight teenagers with murder over the deaths of Dau and Chol.<\/p>\n <\/span>Dau Akueng and Chol Achiek were allegedly murdered in Cobblebank in Melbourne\u2019s outer west.<\/span> Composite: Gofundme\/<\/p>\n Elijah, 17, credits enrolling in an alternative education school for students who have disengaged from mainstream education for helping him choose a different path.<\/p>\n \u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for the school, then I probably would be locked up again or dead,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cThis school is gangster. They look after you, they feed you. They actually check on you.\u201d<\/p>\n If he comes to school feeling sad, Elijah says his teachers know what to do: \u201cThey\u2019ll just leave me alone or I can sit on the bean bag and listen to music,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no point of being disrespectful. If they\u2019re looking after you, feeding you, treating you with respect, there\u2019s no bad in the school.\u201d<\/p>\n Along with attending this school, which supported him through numerous stints in custody over the past few years, Elijah says he has increasingly turned to his Christian faith. Recently, he stopped carrying weapons.<\/p>\n \u201cEven though I want to carry a sword, or I want to \u2026 do a lot of things, I don\u2019t do it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cI started relying more on Jesus. It took away \u2026 a lot of pressure on myself and it made me feel \u2026 just happy in general.\u201d<\/p>\n He used to always carry a sword or knife \u2013 whatever he could fit in his pants. Sometimes he would even carry a weapon to church. It was often a safety measure, he says, because other people \u201chated\u201d him.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not gonna \u2026 sit down and watch people come to me with a knife.\u201d<\/p>\n Victoria has banned machetes but frontline workers in crime prevention programs say young people repeatedly tell them they carry weapons because they are scared or feel as if they have no other choice.<\/p>\n Elijah\u2019s classmate, Kenji* says he has also carried weapons for protection.<\/p>\n After the deaths of Dau Akueng and Chol Achiek he fears for his safety.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like it could happen to me as well,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause it\u2019s happening to a lot of people out there, innocent people as well,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n When his mother saw a video about what happened to Chol she was \u201ccrying even though she didn\u2019t even know who he was\u201d.<\/p>\n Having finished a diversion order for numerous violent offences, which involved attending meetings including with a youth worker and mental health service, and not offending for 12 months, Elijah is about to begin a pre-apprenticeship.<\/p>\n He says disputes between young boys can begin as a petty rift, often over girls, that then spiral into violence.<\/p>\n <\/span>Roadside memorials in Melbourne\u2019s Cobblebank, where Dau Akueng, 15, and Chol Achiek, 12 were killed.<\/span> Photograph: Sean Davey\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s even for the fame \u2026 people don\u2019t do it to get rich and then spoil their families. People do it to get rich and then \u2026 get girls,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Kenji says conflict between groups can start online.<\/p>\n \u201cTalking to someone over the internet \u2026 it just causes problems. It could be the root of some problems with gangs,\u201d he says. \u201cA lot of people die over online stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/span><\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Youth Support and Advocacy Services crime prevention manager Navin Dhillon says his organisation\u2019s early intervention crime programs are increasingly seeing referrals for more complex alleged offending and for children as young as 12.<\/p>\n Dhillon is hopeful of turning children\u2019s lives around because the advocacy service is often the first one to work with these young people.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re able to get in quite efficiently and quite effectively to try and divert them,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Victoria\u2019s children\u2019s commissioner, Meena Singh, says it can be difficult for people to understand that some young offenders \u2013 increasingly pilloried as emblematic of a crisis in the state \u2013 were themselves victims of violence.<\/p>\n Conflicts between gangs are at the heart of some of the violence. A bail decision published in June for a 17-year-old charged with an alleged murder of an 18-year-old involving machetes, is one example.<\/p>\n Police allege that over the space of seven weeks the conflict between two gangs led to the father of the accused being held at gunpoint during a home invasion, a non-fatal beating and stabbing with a machete, and the release of a rap music video in which the victim\u2019s gang taunted their rivals.<\/p>\n Police believe the alleged murder was retribution for the music video.<\/p>\n Pat Boyle, a former Victoria Police detective superintendent who left the force in 2022, says he has tried many times to change the approach to youth gangs, and the state\u2019s failure to do so means the problem has become far worse than he could have imagined.<\/p>\n Boyle researched the state\u2019s youth gangs as part of a Churchill Fellowship, which included speaking with police in Europe and North America. He found that including health, education and social service providers in solutions was vital to driving down crime.<\/p>\n He says Scottish authorities, for example, looked closely at the foster homes youth offenders had been sent to and found that some children were preyed upon by neighbouring crooks or pedophiles, speeding up the cycle of reoffending.<\/p>\n The Victoria police youth gang strategy for 2023-26 says gang members, motivated by status, commit violent crimes, such as robberies and assaults.<\/p>\n In Victoria, the state\u2019s most vulnerable children in child protection and who have contact with the youth justice system \u2013 often referred to as \u201ccrossover kids\u201d \u2013 are at a greater risk of being charged with offences, Sentencing Council research has found.<\/p>\n Singh says young people involved in the child protection system are over represented as victims of youth violence and as youth offenders.<\/p>\n <\/span>The commissioner for Aboriginal children and young people, Meena Singh, says discussions about how to reduce youth crime rarely include young people.<\/span> Photograph: Diego Fedele\/AAP<\/p>\n Singh says children in care <\/em>are \u201cso misunderstood\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe circumstances of those kids\u2019 lives have led to the government saying \u2018we can be a better parent\u2019, but what\u2019s happened after that is an overrepresentation in criminal offending,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Victoria\u2019s Commission for Children and Young People is working on an inquiry into the experiences of people who were aged between 10 and 13 when they first came in contact with the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n Singh says the initial findings were not surprising, reiterating that discussions about how to reduce youth crime too often failed to hear from the young people involved in criminal offending.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just need to get the basics right for young people: safety at home, responding to their health needs, mental and physical, supporting their education needs,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Elijah has his eyes set on his pre-apprenticeship and leaving behind the violent offending he says he grew up with.<\/p>\n He remains friends with the boys in the gang he joined after his release from youth detention. Having spent time homeless together, these boys are bonded by a brotherhood.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve made money together. I starved with them. We\u2019ve ate together. I can\u2019t let go. I wouldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n *Names have been changed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Elijah* tried to keep out of trouble when he got out of lock up. A new path seemed within reach but he was torn. \u201cIt was so mixed feelings,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI wanted to change my life but I had a bunch of stuff on me \u2026 it was like two things fighting at once.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24353,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[8004,3157,14805,335,351,2282,12055,438,4135,2879,629,3904],"class_list":{"0":"post-24352","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-carry","9":"tag-chose","10":"tag-elijah","11":"tag-feel","12":"tag-gang","13":"tag-justice","14":"tag-knives","15":"tag-leaving","16":"tag-melbourne","17":"tag-path","18":"tag-safe","19":"tag-youth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}