This service is saving kids’ lives. More towns want to replicate it, but none have succeeded

Zac Craig sits in the back of a troop carrier on a chilly Saturday night, all hair and grin as the truck loops around the backstreets of Armidale. The teens he is picking up are streetwise – out at all hours, wagging school – but they look up to Craig. They pretend not to, but it’s plain from the way they hang on his words. He makes brotherly jokes as the truck drives to their next hangout, and asks them about their music and their mates. He takes an interest.

Ostensibly, Craig and his mate, Steph Olsen, are driving these kids around so they don’t wander into trouble in this cold country town, one of many where posting social media selfies of violent break-ins, car theft and dangerous joyrides has become a hobby among kids as young as 10. But they’re also showing the kids that it’s possible to choose a different path.

Craig understands the struggles these kids face. He was there himself once, after growing up around dysfunction and “sort of running amok” by age 11. He knew he was doing the wrong thing, but the lure of belonging to a crew overpowered his conscience. His sliding doors moment came when his school principal referred him to a local program that let him spend three days a week training farm dogs. He loved it. His school attendance rate went through the roof. It got him back on track. He’s a dad himself, now, and wants a different life for his kids.

The program was run by BackTrack, which has been diverting Armidale youth away from trouble for 20 years. It’s well-known; its founder, Bernie Shakeshaft, was Australia’s local hero in 2020. BackTrack kids can stay in the program for life, and they graduate from the youth program to jobs at its farming, welding or outreach arms. Alumni such as Craig and Olsen stick around to mentor the next generations, powered by their personal experience and community connections.

But BackTrack is more than that. It feeds and clothes kids, applies for identity documents, organises doctors’ appointments, liaises with government departments, helps them get their bob cat tickets or drivers’ licences, has a residential facility for teens who need it, organises lawyers if they get into trouble, and will be their responsible guardian for bail purposes if they don’t have another option. It can only do all this because it’s privately funded by donors; government grants don’t allow such flexibility.

At present, it has 90 people on its books, three quarters of whom have at least three of the four risk factors identified by Shakeshaft as precursors to incarceration: unstable housing; contact with the legal system; identifying as Indigenous; and early disengagement from school.

Six of its kids would otherwise be on remand at a juvenile justice centre if it wasn’t for BackTrack. It’s an unofficial version of the NSW government’s planned bail house in Moree, which was announced almost two years ago and is still not open.

Olsen and Craig had earned so much trust in the community, that when kids in Armidale began getting into trouble for breaking into houses, stealing cars and going on wild joyrides a few years ago – part of a dangerous crime trend that has swept regional Australia in the past five years – local families approached them for help. The men looked closely at the situation, and saw that young kids – many of them their own nieces and nephews – were wandering around at night, and that’s when they were being pressured by older ones to join their violent escapades.

“We found one of the young kids, an 11-year-old, was just going to his aunty’s home or something,” says Olsen. “These kids see him walking, pull up and coax him into the stolen car. Sometimes the reason they were wandering around was because they had nothing to eat at home.” Teens enlist little kids in their crimes because they can fit into dog doors and windows.

After doing their research, the men went to the BackTrack board with a proposal to run a night service in a troop carrier. If kids wanted to go home, or to their aunt’s, or to the park with their mates, they’d pick them up and take them, rather than let them roam the street. They’d also buy the kids food if they were hungry, and give them clothes if they were cold.

It worked, “pretty much straight away,” says Olsen. Because the community trusts them, the Night Crew has been able to get a heads-up on when kids from Kempsey or Tamworth will be in town looking for action. They know when there might be trouble at a local house. “We know a lot of them personally, so we can tell, all right, yep, it’s payday … so there’s going to be drinking at this house. So we know which places are a bit safer than others.”

The community got on board. “Parents and uncles were starting to ring us going, these kids are at our house, so you don’t have to worry about looking out for them,” Olsen says. “And there could be 10 kids where you go, ‘well we don’t have to worry about looking out for them tonight because they’re at a safe place’.”

On the night shift one chilly Armidale evening in November, the Herald joined Craig and Olsen on their shift. It began with a visit to Armidale Police Station, to tell officers they’re heading out. The Night Crew is not there to help police; their sole purpose is to keep kids out of trouble. Tonight, the circus is in town so they’ll concentrate there. They’ll also make a few trips to the park at the city centre, where kids play until the early hours of the morning. They’ll take calls from kids who need a lift. And they’ll just keep looping the streets, with an eye out for wanderers.

As the troop carrier drives up a hill in the darkness, Craig points to a house. “There’s a house up there that we’ve identified as a safe house for the kids,” he says. “Some weekends we could drop 15 kids up here.”

The truck swings into the carpark next to the park again. The Night Crew’s celebrity is rising; there’s a group of kids there, yelling “BackTrack! BackTrack!” They pile into the truck, and give Olsen their uncle’s address. He knows it and heads off, as the kids chat with Craig. “There might be one or two [a shift] that we haven’t seen before,” says Olsen. “At the start, you could tell there was a bit of a fear factor. But now it’s like, these guys are actually here to help us.”

Ready to pivot

Night Crew began with funding from government. Shakeshaft cites Neighbourhood Watch data that suggests break and enters dropped by 75 per cent during its first three months. But then the funding ran out, so BackTrack used its own resources to keep it going while asking the government for more. If this had happened in another town where the dependence on government money was greater, it would have stopped altogether.

Last year, government funding made up less than 7 per cent of BackTrack’s funding. This year, it’s well under five. The vast majority comes from philanthropic sources, from families giving weekly to private donors to investment funds such as Third Link and Future Generation. Regional Australia Bank has been a long-time partner.

Donors understand the BackTrack model and its need to be responsive; for example, if a project doesn’t work, it can pivot to another without much fuss or red tape. For a while, BackTrack had a government-funded teacher. When that money was cut, its financial independence let it pay for the teacher. Most regional services don’t have that capacity.

This is one of Shakeshaft’s bugbears; the lack of flexibility in how government money can be used, and the problems generated by its stop-start nature. Grants are short-term and tied to specific outcomes. If that’s what BackTrack had relied upon, it would not have been able to operate for two decades – there would have been too many gaps.

Moree’s Street Beat program, similar to the Night Crew, ran for 10 years before it was forced to close because funding was discontinued in 2023 (it was reinstated in late 2024). When funding comes and goes, programs not only lose trained staff – and have to retrain if the funding is reinstated – they lose community trust.

Moree, a few hours north-west, is also struggling with the youth crime problem. But its services are mostly government-funded, so they don’t have the same ability as BackTrack to pivot if the challenges change. Given the money tends to come from different departments, for outcomes specific to those sectors, it makes it difficult to provide multiple services at the same place to the same kid at the same time.

The Moree Plains Shire community safety strategy, released late last year, said, “numerous stakeholders voiced disbelief that despite children being charged with (often multiple and serious) offences, there was no wraparound service response seeking to intervene in risk factors for them and their families that led to them being arrested”.

It cites examples such as people being bailed and released to the community with no plan in place to support their safe reintegration, young people whose offending stopped after being bailed to safe family members, and reoffending after being returned to the custody of parents in active addiction and a lack of justice health support at court. “Through-care is commonly under-resourced and likely limited to supervision provided by community corrections,” the strategy said.

The NSW government late last year allocated $23 million for crime prevention services in western NSW, including early intervention and intensive case management. The money has funded activities involving sport, art and culture; coaching and skill building; youth hubs to provide a safe place where kids can hang out; and service delivery that addresses gaps and does one on one work with vulnerable kids.

‘Being there is a choice’. BackTrack’s base is on the outskirts of Armidale, almost directly opposite The Armidale School with its historic buildings and imposing grounds. BackTrack HQ is less imposing; a series of shacks and shipping containers, with a workshop, some utes and a busy crowd, brimming with busy purpose. The kids are referred by police, schools, court and the community. They tend to be on the cusp of getting into serious trouble.

The cohort is more complex than it used to be. At its inception, says Shakeshaft, BackTrack was dealing with 16 and 17-year-olds who were wagging school.

“Now our referrals are coming at 10, 11, 12. We’re seeing kids not bridge the gap from primary to high school,” he says.

This became a particular problem after COVID school closures.

Being there is a choice. But if they choose BackTrack, they agree to its philosophy. A key pillar is personal accountability. If you f—k it, Shakeshaft tells them, you fix it. Another maxim; leave your shit at the gate.

And it’s underscored by the promise that once you’re accepted into BackTrack, you can never get chucked out. These kids are thrown out of school, home, the shopping centre, says Shakeshaft, they need someone who won’t give up on them.

Volunteer Matt Lynch – a former police officer – demonstrates that commitment every day. It’s his job to drive the trusty troopie around to pick kids up. Some of the kids don’t surface. Lynch turns up anyway.

On a sunny morning with the Herald, the troopie slowly fills up with kids of different ages and backgrounds. Lynch stops outside a house, where rubbish has piled up out the front (BackTrack has already hired a skip to do a clean-up); the adult has been away for months, and the home has become a doss house for kids. Lynch thinks there’s around eight of them living there.

They call; the boy doesn’t surface. They’ll come again tomorrow.

Lynch pulls up outside an unfamiliar address that he’s been sent to by a BackTrack regular, Bella*. The 14-year-old didn’t want to sleep at her own house last night, as her big brother – newly released from jail – was on an ice bender, and she was scared. Bella jumps into the troop carrier, after a hunt for her slides. She’s slim, with delicate features, and is passionate about music. A compliment about her taste triggers an expression of shy pride.

The truck is full as it pulls up at BackTrack. Once they’ve stretched their legs, the group gathers for the morning circle. They talk about how they’re feeling that day. And they answer a question. Today, it’s about what brings them joy. The most common answer is their family. They all crave family.

“If you ask kids to describe BackTrack, it’s almost always around a second family – this belonging stuff,” says Shakeshaft. “When they have a job and a purpose, they start responding.”

Matt’s wife Lynda also works for BackTrack. She supports kids facing court, or held in cells. She organises references and legal support and all the documents that citizens need – birth certificates, for example – but these kids don’t have. “We then physically take them down and sit with them during court, liaise with the solicitors, the magistrates and the police,” she says. “We have great relationships with them, so if they see us there, they know that the young person is in good care and they’re getting the support that they need. A lot of the family members are disconnected and they don’t turn up, or they don’t understand the procedures of the court system.”

Lynda also gives out food and clothes; they don’t have to be part of BackTrack. “Love and respect cost nothing, and that’s what I try and give these young people,” she says.

Almost every senior politician of every stripe has visited BackTrack over the past decade or so. NSW Premier Chris Minns was there recently. One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce is a firm friend of the service. They all talk about replicating it. None has succeeded, although there are valiant attempts in places such as Dubbo and Lake Cargelligo. Some think BackTrack is only possible because of the charisma and hustle of the indefatigable Shakeshaft, who has a rare ability to inspire everyone from wayward kids to corporate titans.

Shakeshaft doesn’t think so. “I’m not that much of a unique individual,” he told a parliamentary committee late last year. “There are Bernies in every state, territory, town, and city. When you find those people and wrap the right model around them, that’s where the success comes from.”

He points to Olsen and Craig. “It’s not me out there on those streets at night; it’s those young men and women with lived experience that have come through the program.”

*Pseudonyms have been used for minors to protect their identity.