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NSW Parliament has passed new laws imposing adult penalties on children for organised crime offences, as police warn the Coconut Cartel is recruiting Pacific Islander teens and community groups work to keep young people out of gangs.
New South Wales Parliament has passed new laws that will see children face adult penalties for some organised crime-related offences, including public shootings and fire-bombings.
Sydney gangland war drives youth crime
The reforms come as Sydney's gangland war escalates, with police warning that criminal syndicates are recruiting increasing numbers of teenagers. Police believe the latest chapter of the conflict is being driven by a power struggle between the Alameddine crime family and the self-proclaimed Coconut Cartel, a network of gang members with links to the Pacific Islander community. Superintendent Phil Hallinan from the NSW Police Youth Command said officers were monitoring the group closely.
We are very aware of the Coconut Cartel and those groups that are traditionally from a Pacific Islander background, he told 7.30. At the moment there has been an increase with Pacific Islander kids being involved in crime. We are hoping that is just a blip, as we have seen in other communities. Some of the kids that have been recruited and involved, it is probably by people they know and people that they might trust and look up to.
Police have also warned of a rising number of teens being recruited via encrypted apps to allegedly commit crimes for hire. Superintendent Hallinan said the tasks ranged from intimidation and harassment to moving cars containing firearms, and in the worst case attempting to carry out murders. There are concerns the gangland conflict has increased the vulnerability of at-risk Pacific Islander teens, particularly after a string of mistaken-identity attacks against innocent people allegedly committed by young, inexperienced criminals.
Former gang member criticises juvenile sentencing
Former gang member Joseph Malik Nikua knows that life well. He said he was 15 when he received his first charge of grievous bodily harm, an offence that currently carries a 25-year maximum sentence in NSW. But he said he walked away from a police station after four hours with little more than a slap on the wrist. There was no real punishment, he said.
And at that age, that taught me something dangerous: I will get lucky again. Emboldened by the lack of repercussions and praise from his friends, Mr Nikua started a youth gang that evolved into the Inner West Brotherhood and the drill rap group 21 District.
The group rose to prominence in 2019 at the height of Western Sydney's postcode wars, and its feud with Mt Druitt rappers One Four was blamed by police for intensifying conflict between inner and outer Western Sydney street gangs. Mr Nikua said he was seriously hurt a couple of times and was stabbed about six times, adding that members of the group were ready to die together.
He spent years of his adult life in jail for involvement in a wild brawl. He said facing a harsh punishment as a juvenile offender may have prevented him from becoming more involved in gangland violence and crime. I would support that decision, and I say that as someone who has a lot of love for the youth, being an ex-juvenile myself, he said.
There needs to at least be bigger penalties and serious consequences that teach young people a harder lesson. He said that when he was very young, he always knew the best time to do crime was before hitting 18. The younger boys understand that it is not going to be much of a penalty when you are still young, and the boys take advantage of that. Since his release from prison, Mr Nikua has focused on turning his life around.
Last year, he and his brothers Jay and Ronnie Nikua, who are also in 21 District, launched a podcast aimed at keeping at-risk youth on the right track, and the former members have been doing outreach work in the community. He said he wanted to teach younger boys how to become men, and that he never truly became a man until he started worrying about other people.
Jay Nikua said that anything you work hard for over a longer period of time, you will subconsciously respect yourself for it. Mr Nikua also said that back in his day, you could not really be a criminal if you were not growing up around that, but now anyone can be a criminal, which shows how much everything has changed. Members of the broader Pasifika community have also been taking steps to address the issue.
Community mentors guide at-risk Pacific youth
On a Wednesday evening in Sydney's south-west, rowdy teenage boys quickly fill a small room at the Oran Park Leisure Centre. Before sitting down for a meal, they are asked to share their highlight of the week with the group, and one young teenager proudly announces he attended all his classes at school, earning supportive cheers from his peers and adult mentors.
Pacific and Australian Community Services founder Bruce Pikula started running the mentoring sessions because he believed many young people in the community needed a safe space that aimed to keep kids on the right track. We get a lot of young people from the streets, at risk, disengaged, a lot come from the schools, we get referrals from Youth Justice, Mr Pikula said.
As members of a team called the Pacific Officers Law Enforcement Network, Pasifika police officers also attend the weekly sessions to work with communities in Sydney's west affected by youth crime. Samoan-born NSW Police Sergeant Ben Sega launched the network about four years ago after noticing a trend emerging in serious and organised crime investigations.
He said it was important to do something because police were seeing too many young men, particularly Pasifika young men, getting caught up in organised crime and being used by these networks to do their heavy lifting. The sessions also provide support for families, and a mother at one session told 7.30 she wanted to keep her children on the right track. I am still learning, she said. I have got seven kids.
Trying to control each and every one is hard. It is difficult. She said the escalation in gangland crime and the increased involvement of teenagers had frightened her. In our area, we are getting stuff happening every day, she said.
Youth justice staff tackle detention challenges
There are break-ins, there are murders happening, so many sirens of different police, ambulances being escorted. It is quite scary how it is not safe anymore. Inside Cobham Youth Justice Centre in Sydney's south-west, more than 70 boys and young men aged 15 to 21 are locked up. Youth worker Albert Tevita, the youth solutions manager, makes a weekly drive to the juvenile detention centre to speak with young people in custody through the Justice Department's Pasifika program.
For them boys, it is pretty hard, they do not have that growing up, he said. They tend to find that love somewhere else. They will find it on the streets if they do not find it at home. Mr Tevita runs workshops with about a dozen of them each week and says the goal is to connect with them while they are inside and then when they get released.
For me it is about building that bridge before they come out, he said. Many of the boys need to be separated when they first arrive because there is rivalry between gangs from different parts of Sydney. Leilani Tonumaipea from Youth Justice NSW said it is quite common at the moment, even to the point where staff felt like they were running out of units or spaces to house them.
In recent weeks, the program has been expanded to include sessions with worried parents. Ms Tonumaipea said there was an escalation in gang-related crimes and parents were concerned their young people were becoming easily exposed to it, so they asked what they could do to help. For legal reasons, the teenagers inside cannot be identified or have the reasons for their detention disclosed. One has been waiting for his court date for more than a year.
One teenager said some of them are just bad parenting, or some just do not have head starts like others, and that there are a lot of broken kids and broken souls in this place. He said he used to always think about just making money the wrong way, and it turned out bad. Another said it is extremely hard when all you know is that crime life, and that it is a hard cycle to break.
People always told me, your friends will not be there for you when you are in here, and I could not say they were wrong, to be honest, he said. I guess that was a big changing point for me. Asked what could have prevented him from ending up in custody, he said it was having the right support system, having the right role models and actually listening.
Mr Tevita said there is a whole range of things that happens for these boys to get to where they are, and if we do not look back at that, we will not find it.
abc730
abcnews:This story was compiled and edited by the HeadTopics newsroom and HT AI from the reports above.
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