With a couple of basketballs and a portable hoop set up in a carpark, two stars of the Northern Territory's top pro basketball team are helping the youngest residents of the Bagot Community in Darwin build crucial life skills. Hoops 4 Health is run weekly in the community to help young and at-risk Indigenous people in the NT aim high, build resilience and regulate their emotions in a culturally safe environment. "It helps the kids get motivated and do something," said Valemina White, a community leader who has come to watch her grandson play. Since 2016, the program has also been funded to work with kids inside the Northern Territory's Don Dale and Alice Springs youth detention centres, where more than 90 per cent of detainees are Indigenous. Its founder, Warumungu and Nyikina man Timmy Duggan OAM, said many of the kids inside are dealing with acute trauma, or the intergenerational trauma of the Stolen Generations — something he experiences himself. "Intergenerational trauma affects all, if not most, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families in Australia from what's happened with the Stolen Generation and all this stuff. "If we can give someone the tools to deal with it, using our model, then we think we can have a bit of impact there." Mr Duggan said youth detention centres are not equipped to provide the support they needed. "It takes the system – it takes a whole community – for that young person to thrive and heal," he said. "The international evidence shows that by locking kids up, the likelihood of them going back is very high." National Children's Commissioner Anne Hollonds believes too few young people across the country have access to early intervention and diversion initiatives like Hoops 4 Health. And with youth crime making national headlines in recent months, she is undertaking a major inquiry into national reforms to the youth justice system, which she said is in "crisis". "The treatment of children in youth justice is one of the biggest human rights breaches in the country – if not the biggest – right now," she said. She said official reports indicated kids in a number of jurisdictions were being held in solitary confinement, a practice she described as "incredibly harmful". In recent months, youth crime in Alice Springs and other parts of the Northern Territory has prompted calls for a crackdown. In Queensland, the alleged murder of a Brisbane mother on Boxing Day last year prompted the state parliament to pass tough new laws increasing penalties for young offenders. However, Ms Hollonds said the jurisdictions with the harshest laws had the most "problems" with youth offending. "What we're seeing is that tough-on-crime, harsh punitive approach to dealing with children and young people is not the right way to stop crime, to reduce offending and therefore keep the community safer," she said. Despite years of evidence, inquiries, reports and recommendations into youth justice, Ms Hollonds said evidence-based alternatives had not been put into action in a national process of reform. "What I'm hoping out of this project is to come up with some principles that would underpin a road map for reform going forward into the future." Ms Hollonds said she had contacted the relevant federal ministers and every state and territory government to make submissions to the project. The findings are due to be handed to Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus in February next year. Youth advocate Debbie Kilroy believes "courageous" and "bold" changes are needed to respond to youth incarceration nationwide. The organisation she founded, Sisters Inside, supports women and girls in the justice system, and Ms Kilroy said any changes to the justice system should involve shifting funding from prisons to organisations like her own. "Prisons have basically become the default response to social issues in this country," she said. "Those things are of no value if we don't action them." Subscribe: http://ab.co/1svxLVE Read more here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-09/youth-justice-reforms-childrens-commissioner-anne-hollonds/102456772 ABC News provides around the clock coverage of news events as they break in Australia and abroad, including the latest coronavirus pandemic updates. It's news when you want it, from Australia's most trusted news organisation. For more from ABC News, click here: https://ab.co/2kxYCZY Watch more ABC News content ad-free on ABC iview: https://ab.co/2OB7Mk1 Go deeper on our ABC News In-depth channel: https://ab.co/2lNeBn2 Like ABC News on Facebook: http://facebook.com/abcnews.au Follow ABC News on Instagram: http://instagram.com/abcnews_au Follow ABC News on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abcnews Note: In most cases, our captions are auto-generated. #ABCNews #ABCNewsAustralia