Moving Towards Each Other

Stepping into a new story of youth justice with Rev Hazel Davies.  

Australia’s public debate on youth crime is often steeped in fear, punishment, and political point-scoring. It is a story bathed in urgency, outrage, and the illusion that incarceration equals justice.

But what if the Church offered a different story? One that acknowledges accountability and supports victims, but also provides healing and dignity. 

A story that refuses to give up on any child. 

Hazel Davies - a Reverend in the Anglican Diocese of Canberra, founder of Making Peas/ce Movement, and supporter of the Common Grace movement - lives, breathes, and invites us into that story. 

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“How did he get here?”

Hazel remembers the morning a child nearly threw a metal scooter through her windscreen. 

It was a quiet Sunday morning as she was heading into Alice Springs, but she could sense tension in the air. 

Out of nowhere, a young Aboriginal boy on a scooter shot out from a side street directly into the path of her car.

Elders from a nearby settlement were in hot pursuit, shaking their fists and yelling.

Hazel slammed on the brakes, just metres from the boy, bracing for the worst. 

On her other side, a police paddy wagon with sirens blaring appeared, swerving to block the boy’s progress. 

Trapped, the boy ran head long for Hazel’s vehicle - his metal scooter raised with the clear intent of ramming it through her front windscreen 

As he reached her car and lifted the scooter, “I looked into his eyes,” Hazel recalls. “It was like looking down a time tunnel of the deepest, deepest recess of pain, anger, trauma, and fear.” 

Hazel reversed quickly, watched as two forms of justice converged on this young boy, and thought “how did he get here?”

That child wasn’t born violent. He didn’t wake up one morning and choose crime. Hazel reflects on what the evidence now demonstrates - children who are born into cycles of trauma, poverty, and disconnection can carry the weight of generational trauma in their DNA. Some also suffer from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder (FASD) or mental illness.

Australia remains one of the few countries in the world where children as young as 10 years old can be arrested, charged, and imprisoned. And it is Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who are disproportionately impacted - First nations young people are 27 times more likely to be in detention than non-indigenous youth. 

“Ten-year-olds aren't even at the age of consequence,” Hazel explains. “Some are so affected by trauma or disability that they legally can’t be held responsible. But we incarcerate them anyway…by locking them up, we’re actually generating and condoning future crime. The money is there, they can find it for the courts, the police, the prisons. Why can’t they find it for prevention?”

Hazel believes that the system needs to change.

“We need to go forward to them, not away”

Governments must raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility to at least 14; Invest in prevention - mental health, community programs, housing, and education; Support and fund Elders and local leaders, not just courts and police; and embrace restorative justice programs and models such as the Koori Court, which seek healing over punishment, in culturally appropriate ways. 

“I adore them. When I'm out on Country, I've got no off switch for these kids…even though I know they're naughty ...it's not hard to move through quickly to the mother heart…connecting with them and horsing around and kicking a ball and realising there's another way to reach these kids."

The way of peace. 

Peace

Hazel also remembers a moment in 2018, just after the Todd River flowed -  a rare and sacred event in Alice Springs.

The streets buzzed with kids, little mischief-makers she’d seen around town before. That day they were wild with energy, throwing things off the bridge, dancing on the edge of danger and delight. 

Hazel got out of her car.

“Big water, big water, boys,” she said.

“Yeah, big water, big water!” they shouted back.

And just like that, something shifted. They stopped the antics and asked her to take a photo with her phone, to capture them playing in the river, rolling in mud, laughing like the world wasn’t broken.

For an hour, Hazel was in it with them - soaked, filthy, fully human. 

They gave her a number. She sent the footage to their parents.

“Thank you, missus,” they said, grinning, giving a thumbs up.

That day there were no labels. No threats. No dividing lines.  Just muddy feet, laughter, and a glimpse of shalom; peace breaking through.

Stepping into a new story

“Our role is to be ambassadors of Christ…the prince of peace…and that means to be gutsy, to be mediators, to walk into the public arenas and say, "Not on our shift. We don't want this.”

Where others see “offenders,” Hazel sees hurting children as image-bearers of God. Where the system demands toughness, she chooses tenderness. Where headlines condemn, Hazel invites us to “Come forward, move towards one another.”

Her perspective has been forged through decades of working at the invitation of continuing custodians—those who tell of a long corridor of loss and grief from the massacre of their people, removal from Country, and stolen and displaced children, culture, and language,

In a world rushing to punish, Hazel invites us to pause.
To reflect.
And to move towards one another.

Her story challenges the deeply ingrained belief that incarceration equals justice. And instead offers a path laced with healing, courage, and hope. 

May we all step into this new story. 

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Find out more about Common Grace’s efforts to reform Australia’s youth justice system, including our calls to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility, here.