This report is the first output of the Voices of Young People in the Youth Justice System Project (Voices Project). The Voices Project gives young people, with recent lived experience of the Tasmanian youth justice system, an opportunity to share their views on how this system works and to have those views listened to and taken seriously by the community and government decision-makers.

Young people were asked about what it is like for young people to get into trouble with the law for the first time and other topics including arrest, diversion, bail, remand, detention and leaving detention.

This report is about how young people with a youth justice experience view the factors affecting young people’s first and ongoing contact with the law, and how we can better support young people who are at risk of offending.

The Voices Project aims to inform both:

• The Tasmanian Government's Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy It Takes a Tasmanian Village (the Strategy). The Strategy aims to improve the situation of children and young people in Tasmania. It has six main areas where the Government would like to see change; being loved, safe and valued; having material basics; being healthy; learning; participating; and having a positive sense of culture and identity. The Tasmanian Government has committed to providing children and young people with what they need to grow and thrive, alongside their families and communities.
• The Tasmanian Government is developing a new plan for youth justice in Tasmania for the next ten years. The Final Draft Youth Justice Blueprint (the Blueprint) aims to strengthen the supports for children, young people and their families by promoting wellbeing, and helping children and young people avoid coming into the youth justice system. If children and young people don’t have everything they need to grow and thrive, it sometimes means that they end up in the youth justice system. Once young people are in the system, it is harder for some of them to get out.