Suspending young people from school for bad behaviour, rather than keeping them there, could push them into a life of crime, reports Galilee School staff.
Numerous studies confirm that juvenile delinquency is related to academic achievement and other school-related variables (Siegel Welsh & Senna, 2006), and Galilee School staff agree that many of the underlying causes of their students’ delinquent behaviour, and the prevention and control of it, is intimately connected with their experience of school; the nature and quality of it (J. Artup, personal communication, June, 2018). Furthermore, research shows that students’ risk and protective factors are among the most important contributing factors to their delinquent behaviour and it is Galilee’s philosophy to target these. Although there are limitations to this approach – and “most theorists agree that the educational system bears some responsible for the high rates of juvenile crime” (Siegel et al., 2006, p. 273) – the perseverance of the staff to prevent youth crime is a real strength of Galilee School. For example, four years ago, at the age of thirteen, a student from one of Canberra’s mainstream schools began misbehaving there; he started getting into fights, and swearing at and not listening to his teachers, Galilee School staff later told (J. Artup, personal communication, June, 2018). He slid into contact with the juvenile justice system and, like his father and step-father before him, had a high likelihood of living a life of crime. However, enrolling in Galilee School helped changed the course of his life (J. Artup, personal communication, June, 2018), and not only did he move on to college, he began a carpentry apprenticeship with the help of the staff and is mentored by men who are the roles models his father and step-father never were (see also Beresford, 2012 for similar case studies).
Given the fact that Galilee School staff have been headbutted, punched and spat-on, and had the walls and windows of their school smashed and graffitied (J. Artup, personal communication, June, 2018), it would seem unlike that anyone would describe their students as anything but ‘deviants’. To the staff though, this is not who they are but who they are likely to become because mainstream schools fail to consider the challenges that many of them face just trying to get themselves into the classroom (J. Artup, personal communication, June, 2008). As the staff of Communities@Work’s Galilee School in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), they are charged with the hard task of educating fifty students in Years 7 to 10 with severe behavioural disorders (Communities@Work, 2017); these are the young people who have, as Roorda (as cited in Bisset, 2008) described it, “reached the end of the line” (p. 14) for police cautions and warnings. Often suspended repeatedly from mainstream schools because of their aggressive behaviour (Bisset, 2008), many of these students have a history of trauma, mental health issues and family violence (FV) that has not been addressed by their educators until enrolling in Galilee School (J. Artup, personal communication, June, 2018). Galilee’s team of eight teachers and five youth workers have a ‘Whatever It Takes’ approach to address their students’ risk and protective factors so that they stay in the school system and out of the justice one (Baker, 2017). Committed educators, they provide students meals, personal care necessities and transport to and from Galilee School, and are passionate about the need to suspend or incarcerate a student who engages in violence as a last resort option; the staff advocate to minimise the number of days their students spend away from school and in the cells (J. Artup, personal communication, June, 2018). Depending on the severity of the student’s offence, a case conference may be held at Galilee School with their parents, Child and Youth Protection Services (CYPS) caseworkers and any other service providers to address the cause of the student’s issues and to determine the best method of punishment with the staff (J. Artup, personal communication, June, 2018). The fact is that young people need to understand that their actions have consequences, but simple kicking them out of school, locking them up and throwing away the key is not the answer; “otherwise we are talking about kids who, if they’re not at school, can do anything – up to 15 break-and-enters in a day” (Roorda as cited in Bisset, 2008, p. 14) and the cycle of incarceration will continue
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