AFP: 32 of Australia's 37 youth terror prosecutions since 2020 came in two years

Federal police raised the alarm this week: 32 of the 37 young people prosecuted in counter-terrorism cases since 2020 were charged in the past two years. Guardian Australia reported in March that most people charged under the new federal crime of possessing violent extremist material are under 18. In a review of 55 youth terrorism cases, the AFP found the profile was mixed — often young men, many who had received some support or intervention for a mental health condition, some from stable homes and others not.

The past month alone brought two teenagers in Darwin charged with collecting documents that could facilitate acts of terrorism. According to the AFP, the second was arrested after an initial examination of documents and electronic devices at a Northern Territory home allegedly turned up material and online discussions including glorification of mass casualty attacks at schools. Five months earlier, another NT teenager was charged over posts carrying pro-Nazi, anti-immigration, anti-trans and white nationalist themes; his charge sheet alleges he held videos of white nationalist attacks, among them the 2019 Christchurch mosque shooting and the 2022 Buffalo shooting it partly inspired. All matters are still before the courts.

A NSW teenager who pleaded guilty to possessing violent extremist material among other charges said he first ran into that content on TikTok at 14 and went looking for validation from people online. He used ChatGPT to research Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and security arrangements at the Sydney Opera House, and was sentenced to a three-year community corrections order. Others told police they drifted into gore channels on Telegram, where increasingly extreme footage — animal abuse included — gets traded.

Debra Smith, a Victoria University professor working in harm prevention, has watched the age of this cohort drop dramatically over the past decade and has seen teenagers found with hard drives full of what can only be described as gore. She frames it like any other unhealthy subculture, such as gangs or crime for payment: there is now an offering of what young people can look at and get involved in that simply wasn't there years ago.

Levi West, a research fellow at the Australian National University, says the age of those caught up means they may be considered as much victims as perpetrators — a significant challenge for how authorities respond. He points to the legacies of Covid-19 and lockdowns and to screens in young lives, and says parents and schools should ask what sits underneath the numbers rather than blaming algorithms. We are not going to arrest our way out of this problem, he warns.

The Guardian's investigation into extremist material charges in South Australia and nationally found many of those before the courts faced a range of health and social difficulties, including autism diagnoses and learning challenges, raising questions over whether some understood a crime had been committed. With people as young as 13 appearing in court, Smith wants a developmental lens and early, non-punitive pathways to help, with parents, schools and sporting clubs watching for harmful behaviour long before violence looms. Her grave concern, she says, is that handing terrorism offences to 12, 13, 14 and 15-year-olds starts to label them the thing they will become.