By Stephanie Zillman - ABC - 10 February 2021
Former commissioner Mick Gooda has criticised the Palaszczuk Government's youth crime crackdown as an unsustainable "knee-jerk" reaction. mick.gooda@gmail.com
Leading youth justice advocates, including a former royal commissioner, have slammed Queensland's crackdown on youth crime, warning the "knee-jerk" measures will fail to reduce rates of offending and instead push children "further to the margins".
Key points:
· Advocates say the "knee-jerk" youth crime crackdown will further cement re-offending and trauma in children
· The head of the youth crime taskforce says police are only interested in "hardcore recidivists"
· Townsville Mayor Jenny Hill says youth crime programs have so far not worked
It comes after Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk yesterday announced several tough new measures to be implemented as part of Queensland's youth crime crackdown.
These include a presumption against bail for some offences and an option for courts to order teenagers to wear GPS tracking devices.
But the former co-commissioner of the Northern Territory's Royal Commission into the Detention and Protection of Children, Mick Gooda, suggested the punitive measures were reactionary and not based on evidence.
"Communities are grieving and we've got to give communities time to get through that process," Mr Gooda said.
"When decisions are made in a knee-jerk way, it doesn't produce sustainable outcomes for anyone."
Mr Gooda said he supported calls in the community to see action on youth crime and to hold young offenders accountable for their actions.
"In the experience I've had, you're not going to punish kids into doing the right thing," Mr Gooda said.
Instead, he suggested the only way to reduce criminal activity and recidivist offending in children was through direct engagement.
"With youth work, for instance, the hardcore kids the Premier talks about — they don't operate from 9:00am to 5:00pm,which are the operational hours of most public servants and youth services," he said.
"What we need is support services operating at the times when they need it — not when an organisation or government thinks they need it."
Sisters Inside founder Debbie Kilroy says the tough youth crime measures will only push children "further to the margins". (ABC News)
Crackdown to push children 'to the margins'
Prisoner advocate and CEO of Sisters Inside, Debbie Kilroy, said the Queensland Government's youth crime announcement was a "knee-jerk reaction" to demands from police and the police union.
She said the data demonstrated youth crime had been decreasing and most repeat offenders were in the care of government agencies that had failed them.
Ms Kilroy said the crackdown would help cement a cycle of traumatised children who will be pipelined into adult prisons.
"What we will have now is police arresting children, putting them in prison and that's going to be the only answer," she said.
"So we're going to be pushing them further to the margins when we know the majority of these children are in the care of the state."
'Setting up these kids to fail'
Former Queensland Law Society president Bill Potts described the new measures as "short-termism" and said the community would be safer if the Government addressed the underlying causes of youth offending.
"GPS devices don't prevent crime, all they do is tell the police in a snapshot where somebody was at a particular time," he said.
"It's something that might make the public feel good, but which doesn't necessarily prevent crime.
Bill Potts says GPS devices don't necessarily prevent crime.(AAP: Dan Peled)
"The kids who are wearing these things then have to charge these devices up, be responsible enough to do that and be responsible to take care of the device, and often the kids we are talking about have all these social issues.
"I suspect we may be setting up these kids to fail."
Mr Potts said the measures would particularly impact Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people.
"Three per cent of the population are Indigenous, yet they make up 30 per cent of the adult male population in prison. They make up a significant proportion of the children that are in jail," he said.
"We need long-term aims that address the social inequality, vulnerability and the disproportionate over representation of our First Nation people in the justice system.
"If we don't deal with it, we are simply consigning another generation of children to the dark satanic mills of our jail system."
Police to target 'hardcore recidivists'
Assistant Police Commissioner Cheryl Scanlon has been appointed as the head of a new taskforce to target youth crime.
She said police were only interested in "hardcore recidivists" who needed to be "constrained differently".
Assistant Police Commissioner Cheryl Scanlon says police are only interested in targeting "hardcore recidivists".(Supplied: Queensland Police Service)
"It's a real opportunity to reverse the bail onus that we currently have on young people who are our hardcore recidivists when they continue to offend," she said.
Assistant Commissioner Scanlon said a trial for Gold Coast police to use hand-held metal detectors in the safe-night precincts would hopefully reduce knife crime.
Townsville Mayor Jenny Hill — who is currently on bail herself for driving without due care and attention causing death — said she welcomed the Queensland Government's announcement.
"We'll have to wait and see how effective they really are," Cr Hill said.
"The community is really fed up with the cycle of some of these offenders getting out, continuing to reoffend and literally flouting the law."
Cr Hill estimated the "hardcore" group of repeat juvenile offenders numbered between 50 and 70 children, and suggested they moved between Cairns, Townsville and Mackay.
She said she believed the use of GPS tracking devices on young people would assist in dealing with the "here and now" problem of youth recidivism.
"No-one has come up with anything other than using these GPS trackers," she said.
"We've got NGOs [non-government organisations] that are being paid millions of dollars … to try and deal with some of the social issues around these children.
"I have to say someone should be auditing these NGOs because we don't believe that the programs they're commissioned to implement are working."
Police to work in schools
Police Minister Mark Ryan said on Wednesday school-based police support officers will be rolled out in Cairns, with three expected to start by Easter.
Mr Ryan said they would function like police liaison officers and form a strong connection with students and help to intervene at an early stage.
"If young people are heading off the rails, they can be engaged by those support officers," he said.
Mr Ryan said they would be drawn from the 125 additional liaison officer positions promised ahead of the last state election.
"Over the next month we will advertise for those jobs and hopefully by Easter we will have those positions filled," he said.
Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll said supervision of children would be in the spotlight.(ABC News: Chris Gillette)
Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll said she wanted to see greater accountability for guardians of youth offenders as part of youth justice changes.
"It sends a message that, if you are going to supervise this child on bail, that you need to be held to account and have some responsibility," the Commissioner said.
"We have seen many instances where children say they are going to their parents' place and other areas and they don't end up there.
"We see situations where there is little supervision so we really need to hold people to account."
Ms Carroll also sent a "clear warning" to so-called vigilantes to "stop what you are doing".
"You are not going to be treated any different because you think you are doing the right thing here," she said.
"If you are offending and harming communities because of that, there will be consequences."
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