ACT Policing psychologist aims to reach high-risk offenders early, to reduce recidivism

They are stealing cars, ramming police vehicles, endangering other road users, and thumbing their collective noses at court-imposed bail conditions and intensive corrections orders.

In direct response, an intensive police effort has been under way since early August to put the handcuffs on as many as possible.

So far more than 80 offenders - ranging in age between 15 and 32, but most in their late teens or early 20s - have been arrested by Operation Toric (Targeting of Recidivists in Canberra).

However, police know full well locking these offenders up is only a temporary solution and most of those who jailed return to the community certain to reoffend a short time later.

The ACT has the worst recidivism rate in the country and it's climbing fast.

A 2021 Productivity report found 63.4 per cent of ACT offenders were back in the hands of corrective services within two years of their previous offence. This was more than 10 per cent higher than the national average.

For the first time ACT police have enlisted the expertise of a Canberra-based psychologist to map out a future strategy which aims to identify those at-risk young people who are most likely to be future offenders, and put the preventative measures in place early.

Allied to this is the more immediate priority of ensuring those who take such high risks on our roads don't kill or injure others.

"Somehow we need to stop young people jumping into the car with these offenders - for whatever reason - and risking their lives," ACT Policing's Commander of Operations Linda Champion said.

"So the blunt message to these offenders is, 'Which of your friends are you going to kill'?

"Because that's what happened last weekend [in Hume, when the two girls were killed]."

The Hindmarsh Drive road death in May of hard-working, much-admired loved Canberra student 20-year-old Matthew McLuckie, coming 14 months after that of 19-year-old Lachie Seary who was driving home carefully as the designated driver and was fatally punted off the road by a drug and alcohol-affected driver, have resonated strongly within the Canberra community.

And also within the ranks of the police.

"Here was a young fellow, just coming home from work, completely doing the right thing, who was killed because of another driver's recklessness," Commander Champion said.

"It was an awful, awful thing to happen to a nice kid, coming home from work. This just taps into every parent's worst nightmare."

In one of the most successful targeted operational campaigns in decades, and through recruiting to the Toric team, some of the brightest and most motivated young officers in the ACT, the brakes have been strongly applied on the rate of offending.

The next step, police say, is to prevent the cycle starting again.

The Canberra police psychologist, whose identity can't be revealed for security reasons, is preparing a discussion paper and a case study, which Commander Champion believes should warrant a whole-of-government forum in which she hopes multiple ACT agency stakeholders would participate..

This potentially would see police engaging with the ACT's health, education and social services.

The psychologist is an expert in risk-profiling offenders and their types of behaviour, and will be offering up potential ways of identifying them early, then putting them into programs which would minimise the risk these people present to the community.

And while she understands the strength of community sentiment, fuelled by the McLuckie incident and others like it, in putting these high-risk driving offenders in custody and potentially behind bars as the solution, she also knows this only yields a short-term gain. Because the cycle begins again.

"I'm hoping Mr McLuckie, when he hears about this work, is pleased that something more long-term is being planned to address this," the psychologist said.

"There are multiple facets to this. These [offenders] are people on the fringes. For these offenders there is stimulus-seeking in this. It [the risky behaviour] makes them feel more powerful. It's seeking acceptance, usually from a peer network. They also crave an audience.

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"If you are a kid from a pretty terrible family, you might be the stinky kid, the kid with no dental hygiene, the misfit; these are ones who get bullied.

"So how do they take themselves from a person who was bullied to a person who their peers fear or revere?

"Well, they can do some really risky stuff that no one else is going to do."

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