Northern Territory authorities are looking at removing at-risk children from their families if they are found unsupervised late at night.

The NT government says it is considering a plan to remove children picked up by police late at night in Alice Springs from their families and taken to a “safe place” for a child protection assessment. The potential child protection orders would be based on “neglect”.

The government has been urged to respond to rising levels of crime in Alice Springs, where NT Police statistics show a significant spike in crime over the past five years, with particularly steep jumps in assaults and break-ins.

Anti-crime rallies have been held in Alice Springs, as well as Palmerston and Katherine this week. 

Additionally, five children under the age of 14 were arrested in Alice Springs on Wednesday for allegedly stealing three cars and joyriding through the town's CBD. Calls for a youth curfew in the township have been shut down as they would be too difficult for police to enforce.  

Police and Territory Families Minister Kate Worden says the government is still working through “legal issues” with the plan, but will have announcements “in the very, very short term”.

“We are working to make sure that we can legally have an intervention to take those young people into a safe environment, and then make some Territory Families follow-up interventions,” she said.

“Instead of taking a young person home, when they may have already been returned home but have come out again, that the police are empowered to make the right decision around care and protection of that young person.”

Ms Worden did not give any details on what kind of facility would be used, how long the young people would be removed from their families for, or how the plan would legally work.

However, she said it would send a “clear message” to parents and caregivers.

“What we need to make sure is that those parents in Alice Springs understand fully that if their young people are out at night time, [and] if they're returned to them, the next time that may not happen,” Ms Worden said.

“They may be taken into care and protection.

“If you're not capable of keeping them at home then Territory Families will assist you to do that work and we will be making an intervention if that's necessary.”

Alice Springs town councillor and senior Alyawerre man Michael Liddle said young offenders cannot thrive in dysfunctional homes.

“You can take them off the streets, and take them back to the house so-and-so … but they're going to be back [on the streets] because that house is chaos,” he told ABC Alice Springs.

“They need to be taken back to a detention centre or placed somewhere where they can learn things, because they're not going to school and they don't know the structures and the requirements of what it takes to be nice people.

“We're not growing nice people.”

Federal Labor politician Marion Scrymgour says she wants more detail about the plan. 

Ms Scrymgour - whose electorate covers the vast majority of the Northern Territory - said that “if the minister is saying that there are repeat offenders and they're going to look at removing them and taking them to a safe place, well then, that's one measure… [but] what if [a child] is just hanging around the streets - they've not been involved in a crime - what's the legal basis for the removal of that child?”