‘No evidence’ that $40m youth crime program reduces offending

There is “no evidence” the state government’s multimillion-dollar youth-crime prevention program has meaningfully reduced criminal behaviour, with seven in 10 young people offending after being enrolled in the program, an audit of the program has found.

Released by the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office (VAGO) on Wednesday, the report also found that the Department of Justice had overstated the effectiveness of the program when describing it as a “proven, evidence-based” intervention, and that it was reaching just 2 per cent of the state’s young offenders.

“While the department says that the program is proven to help reduce offending, we found no evidence of this,” the report found.

The audit examined a youth-crime prevention program which has handed more than $40 million to community groups since 2016 and is run by the department. The money is allocated to organisations who provide mentoring and case management services to at-risk young people as a form of early intervention and prevention. This includes boosting engagement in education, employment, sport and other activities to tackle the underlying causes of offending.

When matching program participants with Victoria Police records, the audit found 70 per cent of the 258 participants offended in the first six months of entering the program. The total program participation rate represented about 2 per cent of the 26,977 alleged youth offenders recorded by Victoria Police between 2022 and 2025.

“While some alleged offenders among the remaining 98 per cent may be benefiting from other programs, this statistic suggests that there is a high level of unmet need,” the report said.

Frontline workers who spoke with auditors as part of the report said they were seeing increasingly complex cases, including the “glorification of machetes” on social media and organised crime gangs recruiting young offenders online.

VAGO also found the cost of the program varied dramatically between providers, from $400 per participant enrolled via Melton City Council to more than $24,000 per participant through Anglicare Victoria.

“The report found that while organisations with a lower cost per participant may be more cost-efficient, they may be delivering less intensive services. For example, Melton City Council often organises community events, while Anglicare Victoria focuses on intensive casework with families,” it said.

While VAGO found that demand for services exceeded program capacity from two-thirds of organisations, the report noted: “It is not clear how the department considers cost-efficiency when it sets each organisation’s contractual targets for the number of participants reached, especially as there is no minimum service delivery requirement or recommended average cost per participant.”

The audit also found there was no obvious link between the participant costs and offending outcomes and said, “participants who re-offended did not offend less often or commit less serious crimes”.

While some programs reported encouraging results, with 42 per cent of participants in Brimbank and 36 per cent in Hume not offending in the six months after enrolling, auditors cautioned the numbers were too small to draw conclusions.

It also criticised how the department measured success, finding it counted any reoffending rate below 100 per cent as a reduction, effectively assuming all participants would reoffend without the program.

The audit comes ahead of the release of state’s latest crime figures on Thursday. The most recent statistics, released in June, showed a 6 per cent drop in youth crime in the year to March, while adult crime rose by 10 per cent, according to the Crime Statistics Agency.

It also comes two months before the state election on November 28, where youth crime is shaping up as a key issue among voters.

Last week, Premier Ben Carroll announced $23 million in new programs and grants to avert youth crime, including sports programs and homework clubs. Labor has also promised that if re-elected, it will give police and protective service officers the power to randomly search people anywhere in public with metal detectors, without needing a warrant or reasonable suspicion they have a weapon.

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