Guest blog by Val Braithwaite, School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet), Australian National University.

We are extremely proud of Sharynne Hamilton  who completed an Indigenous internship with RegNet while she was doing her Honours degree.

Sharynne has suspended her PhD at RegNet to work on a project on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders among children in the criminal justice system in Western Australia.  Some children commit serious offences, but most get involved in repetitive, less serious stuff and end up with a series of sentences—by 14 years of age, a child can have had multiple interactions with the law.

To highlight the plight of Aboriginal children involved with the justice system beyond the Northern Territory, this video has been released. In time we will hear the results of this research, but Sharynne has asked for this  short video to be shared as a reminder of the extent of the problems in juvenile justice, the links to multiple systems such as out-of home care that continually fail children from a very young age, and the challenges it presents to all of us.

Australian Juvenile Justice from Raewyn Mutch on Vimeo.