Following the success of his debut title The Criminal Class, prison educator Paul MacNamara returns to the classroom, this time shining a light on Australia’s juvenile justice system – and the “revolving door” of young offenders inside.
Paul MacNamara thought teaching young offenders in detention would be easy. The prison educator had already spent seven years working with adults in correctional facilities across NSW when he decided to change classrooms. “Coming from jail, I thought I’d seen the toughest of the tough,” MacNamara explains.
“The difference in the adult system is that education is a privilege you have to earn, and something you can be removed from. In the juvenile system, [education] is compulsory if you’re under the age of 17. There were a lot of young people who were resistant, who really didn’t want to be at school but were compelled to be.”
Over the next ten years, MacNamara witnessed a “revolving door” of young offenders, many of whom fit into a common mould – they came from a low socioeconomic background, had a history of trauma, and treated juvie as an escape.
“There were those who found respite inside. For them, having meals, a hot shower, clean sheets, and adults who asked about their day was quite different. In the winter, the facility would fill up, almost like people were searching for a break from the cold.
“If I was put in [prison], I’d feel like an animal being caged. The heavy steel doors, cold concrete floors, the guards, having every move determined by somebody else. What’s happened in life for this young person to think juvie is like being on holiday?”
The complexity and chaos
MacNamara’s decade’s worth of experience form the basis of his second novel, Inside Juvie: A Teacher’s Story, a fictionalised account of the complexity and chaos of juvenile detention in Australia.
It’s a sequel of sorts to the author’s first title, The Criminal Class: Memoir of a Prison Teacher, which debuted in 2023 to a raft of award nominations, including at the Queensland Literary Awards and Ned Kelly Awards, and is now being pitched to studios for potential screen adaptation.
Inside Juvie, which can also be read as a standalone story, took MacNamara “the best part of two years” to produce. Since its release on 4 December, Big Sky Publishing has already ordered a second print run to meet demand – an impressive feat for an author who has had no formal training as a writer.
“When I wrote The Criminal Class, I was writing what I could recall as a straight memoir, but with the nature of Inside Juvie dealing with juveniles and the need for confidentiality, I wanted to make it into a fictionalised story.”
“It was a bit of a process but once I dedicated the time to sit down to write, it just flowed.”
Inside Juvie picks up where The Criminal Class left off – upon receiving news that the adult prison he taught in is being decommissioned, protagonist Tommy, a former state schoolteacher, guides readers through his transition to the tumultuous classrooms of youth incarceration.
Factors leading to detention
Along the way, readers are exposed to the wide gamut of circumstances and challenges that lead a young person to detention, from foster care and addiction to child abuse and intergenerational trauma, which are revealed through several self-contained anecdotes.
According to the latest Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) data, there were 845 young people in detention in Australia on an average night in the 2024 June quarter, 60 per cent of whom identified as Indigenous and 90 per cent as male.
Young people who have been maltreated are at greater risk of engaging in criminal activity and entering the youth justice system, with half (50 per cent) of those in detention being the subject of a substantiated notification for abuse or neglect in 2022-23.
“A few years into teaching, I remember two adult guards walking with a kid who was about 11 or 12. He was short and thin, probably malnourished. He was definitely a firecracker. He could be physically violent and verbally abusive,” MacNamara recounts.
“These guards were walking with the young fellow and for their protection, they put him in handcuffs and a spit mask. In Australia in the 21st century, is this really the best that we can do?”

The role of education
As was the case with adult prisoners, MacNamara was impacted by the low rates of literacy and numeracy among young offenders, noting “large gaps in their education”. Instead of focusing on academic success, MacNamara believes prison educators yielded better results when they built positive relationships with inmates and acted as a trusted role model.
“In some families, being a lawyer or a doctor is the family trade, but these guys didn’t have that example shown to them. Often, their dad was in jail, their grandfather was in jail, maybe their mum was in jail as well. It was what the family does,” MacNamara reflects.
“You’d watch them come in, go out and grow up over the years. You’re a constant in their lives. That was the most powerful thing I learned – you’re not looking for grades, you’re not looking for certificates, you’re just trying to build a connection with the kids.
“I’ve heard prisoners say that what changed for them was the one person who believed in them. As educators, we have to show that there are pathways out of juvie and instil the idea of ‘I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become’.”
Rates of reoffending among juveniles are cause for concern: of those aged 10–16 released from sentenced detention in Australia in 2020-21, 66 per cent returned within 6 months, and 85 per cent within 12 months.
MacNamara says the least-resistant students were more likely to break the recidivism cycle by, for example, improving their education or taking up a trade, but it took others re-entering the prison system as adults to find a way out.
“I remember having an ex-student of mine come back to speak to my class. He was a tough character – someone I wouldn’t have put my money on to easily change.
“After he got out of juvie, he ended up going to jail, and when he finished his sentence, he returned home to these neighbourhood kids greeting him as if he was a war hero. He’d just come from jail, it was nothing to celebrate, and he didn’t want that experience happening for others. He ended up becoming a mentor which was fantastic.”
Early intervention
While MacNamara thinks criminals should be held accountable for their actions, he advocates for early intervention and a trauma-informed approach to justice.
“If your house is broken into, it’s natural to want to lock up the burglar and throw away the key. I don’t excuse the crimes the kids commit, but going about the old ways is not the greatest, especially because these kids do, by and large, come from a history of trauma and lower socio-economic backgrounds.
“There’s something that needs to happen in their lives earlier to open up different paths for them.”
MacNamara hopes Inside Juvie can facilitate more nuanced and compassionate conversations on the topic: “A lot of what you see on TV is black and white, but life has a lot more grey, and I’d like people to consider that. Hopefully it can lead to some kind of understanding.”