What works instead of detention, and who should hold the money?
The evidence for community-led, place-based alternatives to youth detention, and the money that follows.
What worked, what failed, what is reusable.
Lead with the local result. Maranguka in Bourke showed a sharp drop in police-recorded family violence and youth offending, with an independent KPMG cost-benefit behind it. A costed local win beats a national argument.
Put the design in community hands. The common thread across Maranguka and Change the Record is Aboriginal-led governance of both the program and the data. The reform is the transfer of control as much as the service.
The evidence base is already written. ALRC Pathways to Justice and the Closing the Gap youth-justice target give the national scaffolding. The work is funding what already works, not proving it again.
Reusable kit: fund a costed, community-governed, place-based model, measure it independently, and use the national reports as the mandate rather than the argument.
Research resource, not legal advice. Read the original source before acting. Cases and campaigns are gathered by shared issue tags; some may be machine-extracted and pending human review.