Australia’s human rights watchdog has fired a scathing broadside at Queensland’s proposed youth justice laws, saying they will put more children behind bars and erode basic human rights without improving community safety.
The proposed laws will make bail breaches a crime for children, increase the maximum prison term for car thefts, allow police to arrest kids on suspicion they may breach bail and make courts take into account - during sentencing - crimes that serious repeat offenders could hypothetically commit in the future.
The government has also promised to build two new youth detention centres to hold the predicted surge of new child prisoners after the laws pass.
National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds says the plans are “troubling on a number of fronts” and will impinge on human rights, despite what appears to be “little consultation” about it.
“Not only will this bill increase the number of children in detention in Queensland and erode their basic rights, it will do nothing to address the root causes and won’t keep the community safer,” Hollonds told AAP on Feb. 24.
The commissioner said international evidence showed reducing youth crime required the reform of education, health and social services systems and coordinated community-based programs to meet the needs of children and families in poverty and disadvantage, “not tougher bail laws and more children’s prisons”. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk refuses to reveal who proposed the harsh child bail laws, saying “the community” had been talking about it for a long time.
“Now we’ve been listening to the community, that’s exactly what we’ve done,” Palaszczuk told reporters.
The premier said she was comfortable with overriding her own government’s human rights laws, despite widespread criticism.
“Yeah, the legislation says that we can provide that statement to the parliament, and that’s exactly what we did,” Palaszczuk added.
After closing public submissions on the bill, a committee will probe it for two weeks before the Labor-controlled parliament takes a vote.
The submission period for most other legislation usually runs for weeks, with parliamentary committee probes running for months.
Queensland Human Rights Commissioner Scott McDougall said he has been stonewalled by the premier about the proposed laws.
“It was unfortunate: we did write to the premier and have not yet had a response,” McDougall told ABC Radio National on Feb. 24.
Queensland has more children in detention than any other state or territory and with its youth prisons at capacity, many kids being held in police watchhouses.
“We’re talking about 10 or 11 children in one cell, sharing one toilet, having to go to the toilet in front of their peers, sleeping on plastic mats, having no access to fresh air, daylight, exercise, family limited, very limited access to education and health,” McDougall said.
“These are appalling conditions that we are tolerating in Australia today, and we cannot allow that inhumane treatment to be normalised.
McDougall said about 70 percent of the children behind bars are Indigenous, and the proposed laws will impact them disproportionately.
“It’s absolutely heartbreaking to visit these places and see the large numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in there,” McDougall added.
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