Australia’s youth justice system is in crisis. The ideal that our justice system is built on fairness and equality before the law is failing, if it was ever true, especially for children and young people. What should be a system of rehabilitation and support is instead overly punitive and under-resourced, ultimately leaving many children worse off once than when they first encounter the system. To support our submission, we attached our position paper Last Resort, Not First Response: Protecting People in Australia’s justice system. This paper explores the outcomes and impacts of youth incarceration across Australia and demonstrates that locking children up does not make communities safer.