If Jailing is Failing, This is Too: The JRI ‘No Child Policy’

The Justice Reform Initiative tells us that “jailing is failing.”

They host conferences. They produce reports. They speak in the language of decarceration, reform, nuance, balance. And then they host a “lived experience luncheon” where children are banned, not because anyone asked for a child-free space, not because survivors demanded it, not because women said they needed safety from children. But because, as stated by the Acting Executive Director of JRI Emma Cother, organisers say they cannot guarantee that people attending will not have orders prohibiting them from associating with children.

In other words, the possibility that someone in the room may be legally restricted from contact with children, through, for example, a Child Protection Offender Prohibition Order, becomes the basis for excluding children altogether.

For clarity, Child Protection Offender Prohibition Orders commonly ban people convicted of child sex offences from being near schools, playgrounds, or having any contact with children.

Let that sit for a moment.

This is a conference about reforming prisons.
A luncheon branded as “lived experience.”
An event sponsored by Project:herSELF – an organisation that publicly positions itself as supporting formerly incarcerated women.

Why the silence?

One of the most troubling aspects of JRI’s no child policy is that it was not proactively disclosed or openly discussed with stakeholders. It appears to have been explained only when individuals privately raised concerns that required clarification.

That matters. 

Because those affected are not abstract categories. They include people who were sexually abused as children. Single mothers who cannot easily secure childcare. Young people with lived experience of incarceration who may themselves be presenting. Women still navigating childhood abuse trauma who deserve transparency, not quiet policy shifts. A decision that reshapes who can safely and practically attend should not surface only when someone happens to ask the right question or when they arrive at the luncheon with their child.

Furthermore, attendance at this luncheon is restricted to people with lived prison experience who hold a bursary or complimentary registration. Bursaries are prioritised if you are speaking at the conference. In practical terms, this means those attending the luncheon are also presenters and participants in the broader conference program. The conference program itself includes a child and youth component, with young people participating. If the rationale for excluding children from the luncheon is that organisers do not wish to restrict individuals subject to child-related non-association orders, this raises an obvious question: how is that risk being assessed or managed across the rest of the conference environment? If no such individuals are expected to attend, then the blanket exclusion of children appears unnecessary. If the possibility of them attending does exist, then transparency about how that risk is being managed, across the entire event, becomes even more critical. 

Silence on this point does not reduce risk. It simply relocates it.

What about the survivors?

A staggering number of criminalised people are themselves victims of childhood sexual abuse. Many young people in custody are victim-survivors. For them, this is not abstract. It is not theoretical.

It is deeply embodied.

When you create a space where children are excluded because organisers cannot guarantee the absence of people subject to child-related non-association orders, you are making a choice about whose safety is foregrounded, and whose is secondary.

You are deciding which discomfort is tolerable.

You are signalling what kind of reform you are prepared to stand behind.

Co-author and lived experience survivor of child sexual abuse and incarceration, Samantha Burns, shared her concerns about JRI’s no child policy saying, “it’s weak that they are choosing to remove as much of a liability as they can by not making this policy public knowledge, but even more concerning, JRI are putting formerly incarcerated women and children at risk by not telling them up front.

JRI are promoting the inclusion of children and young people’s voices at the conference and there’s a whole section dedicated to kids. This is being used as a draw card and presented as a positive, feel-good element of the event. Yet at the same time, they are excluding those same children and young people from participating in the luncheon to protect and allow the participation of child sex offenders. 

It’s actually quite damaging to the well-being of any child or young person that wants to present and share their lived experience. They’re being told, even if only indirectly, that their role is not to participate fully, but simply to service that audience and that crowd. 

So, their voices are only as good as their presentation.

There’s actually no ability for any of these children and young people to mix with people from the Justice Reform Initiative outside of delivering their speech and get any kind of validation, vindication, or any genuine sense of community. So they’re actually being used.”

Samantha expressed further concerns when asked about the impact on mothers who want to attend the luncheon but are unable to organise child care for their children. “Overwhelmingly, the women in our community are mothers. Aside from the fact that this creates a major accessibility issue for women who cannot get a babysitter or who are nursing mothers, the frightening reality is that we know the statistics around women’s incarceration and the high number who have themselves experienced child sexual abuse. Many of these women were silenced as children, and now as adults, when they are trying to move forward and build functioning lives, they are being silenced again. That is deeply damaging.

As victim-survivors, we know that a defining trait of this type of offending, and the reason it is so harmful, is that it is built around silencing victims. It relies on secrecy, intimidation and the ongoing triggering and traumatisation of those who have already been harmed. Any further silencing of victims compounds that harm.

And there are young people, not just my son’s age, but also young people that are in the juvenile justice system right now that can’t attend through no fault of their own. They’re good enough to speak, but not good enough to remain in the room. The message becomes clear: we will take your story, but we will not offer you the space, the meal, or the opportunity to build community. Yet the harsh reality is that once young people, particularly those in youth detention, are pulled into that system, they are in it. There is no easy way back.”

Samantha also spoke about the harsh reality of prison hierarchies and the value of prioritising one group above another in the prison reform conversation. “This is where it actually shows how out of touch JRI are with their target audience. Most often, people convicted of crimes against children end up in the protectee system and have little to no understanding, exposure or experience of the mainstream prison setting, which greatly affects the material they have to share.”

But outside of that, there’s a common misconception that all criminals are the same.  I hate to be the one to break it to everyone, but they’re not. People that rob houses don’t want to sit at the same table as people who abuse children. And the irony is, the prison system itself recognises that. That’s why they’ve created units like “protection.”

And so the experience of a child sex offender through prison is going to be different than someone in the general prison population. They’re probably going to be the most unrelatable, irrelevant and unwelcome presenters you could have. They are also the people who will likely have the least impact on the mainstream prison population, where so many people inside are parents themselves.

“If we actually want to stop things like recriminalisation and make a real impact,” Samantha said, “we should be prioritising children and young people at this conference. They are the ones who still have their whole lives ahead of them and a chance to avoid being pulled into that system.”

In closing, Samantha stated, “I just don’t get the logic in this decision. It seems irrational and reckless. On one hand JRI prohibits children and youth from the luncheon because, essentially, JRI simply wants to turn a blind eye as to whether child sex offenders may be attending the luncheon. On the other hand, there appears to be no restrictions in place for the conference itself. Children and young people will be using shared facilities with people who may have orders against associating with children.

I’m worried about the potential impacts for mothers who may be reported to Child Protection agencies for exposing their children to this environment.”

The disconnect

This policy also sits awkwardly beside recent public commentary by a senior Northern Territory representative of the Justice Reform Initiative, who made highly visible remarks about the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in the context of the Jeffrey Epstein child sexual abuse scandal, and who has previously commented on people housed in “protection” units.

Those comments, available on their Facebook account, reflect sentiments that many in mainstream prison culture hold about certain categories of “offenders.”

This same employee, also commented on a Facebook post discussing harms being caused by a former prisoner who was housed in protection, using language suggesting disrespect and contempt for protectees. And then just weeks later posing in a photograph with that same person.

Another employee who also works as a barrister that accepts prosecution briefs, claims predominantly to prosecute sexual offences against children. The writers neither criticise nor praise the values held by these individuals – the point is the confusion between stated organisational values and those held by the individuals that work for and represent JRI.

Which raises further questions.

What is the actual position?

Is the organisation’s official line one of universal decarceration: no hierarchy, no carve-outs?

Or does that commitment waver depending on the crime?

Because movements fracture when there is a gap between rhetoric and practice.

The silence from sponsors

RAD Faction sought comment from Project:herSELF, as the sponsor of the lived experience luncheon, asking:

• Whether they are aware of the no child policy.
• Whether they have been informed of whether conference attendees who are also victims of child sexual abuse were informed that child sex offenders may be present.
• How Project:herSELF resolves to sponsor an event that prioritises attendance of child sex offenders over children.

JRI were subsequently informed that these questions were asked. JRI’s response was to condemn the asking of questions rather than to address the purported silence on the no child policy.

No response was provided from Project:herSELF.

Sponsorship is not neutral. It signals endorsement. If you fund a space, you share responsibility for the boundaries that space sets.

Reform cannot be convenient

If “jailing is failing,” then reform must be uncomfortable. It must confront the hardest categories. It must hold complexity. But it cannot quietly create structural barriers for the very women it claims to amplify. Nor can it silence the children affected by incarceration, themselves.

You cannot build a decarceration movement that mirrors the exclusions of the system you say you want to dismantle.

You cannot call something a “lived experience luncheon” and then design it in a way that excludes the lived experience of motherhood or children.

You cannot preach inclusion while constructing attendance rules that privilege one set of legal constraints over the material realities of women and children’s lives.

There were other ways to manage this.

The question is why the organisers did not choose them, and why they insist that this is what reform should look like – something that is curated, managed, and made palatable by uncriminalised people.

Because if jailing is failing, then reform that reproduces hierarchy is failing too.