A recent report by the Australian Institute of Criminology found that ‘jail does not deter young offenders.’

The report’s findings come amid an escalating debate in Australia over the sentencing of juvenile offenders. Each state has its own system: compared to Victoria, for example, which favours a more community-based rehabilitation program, WA has taken a harder line, with little success.

Outcare Inc. is a multi award-winning, WA-based, not-for-profit organisation that has an educational program for schools, which seeks to DETER young students from crime.

Outcare Inc. is the major non-government provider of crime prevention services in WA, working with ex-offenders and their families, and the community, to make WA a safer place.

Their school program, “Keeping Kids Out of Crime” (KKOC), aims to deglamourise crime with their ‘Education through Credibilty ‘presentation.

KKOC is a crime-prevention and education program for upper-primary and secondary schools (usually yrs 5-10.). It uses real-life experiences from Gary O’Reilly, a former long-term prisoner, who talks to students about the realities of prison and the difficulties he faced when re-entering society. He talks about such things as bullying, racism and truancy.

“The KKOC program can be linked to the educational curriculum in the subject  areas of Health, Pastoral Care, English, Science and Society & Environment,” explained Peter Sirr, CEO.

Although Outcare has to scrape together funding, with no support from the DET, schools have already taken advantage of this worthy and excellent program:

“For the financial year ending ’09, we delivered presentations to more than 12000 students in 46 public and private schools,” Peter said.

To enquire about a Keeping Kids out of Crime presentation at your school, please call Outcare on 08-6263 8622. www.outcare.com.au

For a full profile and interview, see Oct Western Teacher.