The Northern Territory has become the latest jurisdiction to make boasting about crime on social media a criminal offence after the government fast-tracked new laws through parliament. But experts say there's no evidence the laws will make the community safer.
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00:00After school, the Smith kids head to the library, but some of their classmates are heading to
00:07TikTok and it's fueling a concerning online trend.
00:11Some of the kids in my class steal stuff and because they post it other people think it's
00:19cool and so it's become a thing.
00:23They could now be jailed for up to two years under new laws that passed NT Parliament last
00:28week.
00:29I feel like two years is a long time.
00:31Queensland and New South Wales have introduced similar measures to help crack down on dangerous
00:36crime.
00:37South Australia's now drafting its own post and boast laws, while the Coalition's pushing
00:42for a new federal offence.
00:44Zoya believes it's a deterrent, but her family's not convinced.
00:49It's not like a random kid off the street's going to all of a sudden decide they want
00:52to steal cars based on a video they've seen online.
00:55Smart people will be like, oh, this shouldn't be happening, I should probably talk to someone
01:01about this.
01:03That scepticism is shared by some criminologists, who argue platforms should be taking the content
01:08down.
01:09But most of the behaviours that they're bragging about online already carry more severe penalties
01:14than these new laws, so adding another offence isn't likely to change their behaviour.
01:21Lawyers who will test the laws in court are also unconvinced.
01:25What you'd really need is to be able to prove that person X as opposed to person Y was the
01:30person that put the video online and really just practically that is incredibly difficult.
01:35And those are the circumstances that we should be focusing in on, not on the latest symptom.