Justice for Juvies
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What is the premise of Sarah Hopkins’ novel *The Subjects* and why did she write it?
This is an ABC podcast.
Hi, it's All in the Mind on RN. I'm Lynn Malcolm. Today with stories, both fact and fiction, about young people and how too often the system fails them and their families. You may remember seeing this disturbing Four Corners programme on ABC TV about a juvenile detention centre in the Northern Territory of Australia.
It's august twenty fourteen. Inside the Dondale Youth Detention Center, behind this gray door, six boys are being held in the isolation wing.
As evening approaches Inside the behavioral management unit, a 14-year-old boy is trying to get out of his tiny concrete cell. The boy has been kept in solitary confinement for 23 and a half hours a day for 15 days straight. He's lost all sense of time and he's deeply distressed. If we're finally or not? Like the one they see Worth having that never coming easy.
It's disturbing scenarios like this one that moved novelist and criminal lawyer Sarah Hopkins to write her latest fiction. She worked at the New South Wales Aboriginal Legal Service for over 20 years and spent a number of those appearing for young people in the Children's Court, where she witnessed firsthand the injustice experienced by children, teens and their families. But the world of her novel, The Subjects, diverges from reality. with an intriguing element of social engineering lurking in the background. It explores the over-medicalisation of bad behaviour and the over-criminalisation of young people. The story is written from the perspective of the adult, Daniel, who reflects on his time spent in a juvenile delinquent centre as a teenager.
The judge peered down at me again like it hurt his eyes to do it, and without looking at me a second time, made a hurried pronouncement placing me on an order for twelve months under section whatever, my release conditional upon compliance with blah blah and so forth. Daniel, do you understand what I've said? I nodded. You are not free to go home, Daniel. I have ordered that you enter a residential program to address the issues underlying your behaviour. You'll be taken directly from the courthouse to the location. What this means is that you are a lucky young man. Please don't forget that. Leaning forward, he repeated it slowly. A very lucky young man. Do you understand that, Daniel? I said I did. I understood.
The blade didn't fall. I slid into the back seat of a van with a driver who was not the man in the grey suit. On my way to find out what lucky meant.
So Sarah Hopkins, take us to Daniel's world.
So Daniel is a sixteen-year-old who runs an operation dealing drugs in high school. And when he gets caught, rather than being sent into juvenile custody, he is sent to a mysterious outback facility where he meets a group of other young people like him. delinquents, intelligent delinquents, maybe even gifted delinquents, it isn't like anywhere that they've been before.
How does the opening Four Corners report illustrate the over‑criminalisation of youth?
And so there's a question, what is this place all about? There are sessions with a doctor, but there's no medication. There are classes, but there's no syllabus. There are field trips without any real purpose. So Daniel has the sense that they're part of some kind of experiment, that he and the others are part of some kind of experiment, but he doesn't know what that is. And he doesn't know what's happening in the background. But he starts getting a sense of it. So it's exploring really how we deal with bad behaviour, you know, how we're criminalising, medicalizing, medicating, and what are the alternatives.
Yeah, so the other main character. So Daniel, as you say, he's been dealing selling uh prescription drugs. Uh he has a very dark story in his past, traumatic story in his past. Rachel, she's tough and remote, and Daniel falls in love with her, and she has a dark secret, abuse at the hands of a foster family. And Alex is obsessed by all the horrible things that happen in the world. So they all come with their background, but in this institution. they're not diagnosed with any sort of mental illness, they're not given medication. What was your point there?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the premise of Sarah Hopkins’ novel *The Subjects* and why did she write it?
0:02–4:15
2
How does the opening Four Corners report illustrate the over‑criminalisation of youth?
4:15–7:32
3
What does Daniel experience at the mysterious out‑back detention centre?
7:32–12:02
4
Why does the book critique the over‑medicalisation of ‘bad behaviour’ in young people?
12:02–16:43
5
How does Sarah Hopkins describe ‘Justice Reinvestment’ as an alternative to incarceration?
16:43–19:49
6
What results has the Burke community seen after five years of the Justice Reinvestment project?
19:49–24:39
7
What ethical questions arise from the novel’s ‘social‑engineering’ experiment on youth?
24:39–28:26
8
What are Sarah Hopkins’ next steps for her legal work and future writing projects?
28:26–29:03