Queensland Liberal National Party (LNP) Opposition Leader David Crisafulli has committed to removing the “detention as a last resort” presumption from the state’s Youth Justice Act in response to soaring crime rates.
Mr. Crisafulli announced the policy on X (formerly Twitter), saying it would “make Queensland safer.”
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, on a typical day in Queensland, there were 287 people in detention over the age of 10, well above the next highest state, New South Wales—the country’s most populous—which had 190.
Indigenous youths accounted for 63.2 percent of Queensland’s total.
A group representing victims of crime had their first meeting on Feb. 5 with Premier Steven Miles, who signalled legislative changes after admitting faster progress needed to be made to fight the rising rate of youth crime.
Mr. Crisafulli responded saying: “Well if he admits more needs to be done, great. We’ve got a solution on the table right now. Remove detention as a last resort. Unshackle the judiciary. Rewrite that Youth Justice Act ... Get serious about early intervention. Fix the broken ResiCare system. We'll go back to Parliament tomorrow if he’s serious about it.
“You can say more needs to be done, but the solutions are on the table. We’ve been putting them on the table for three years.”
He said youth crime was “ripping a hole through the state, from one end to the other.”
Crime at a 20-Year High
Figures released by the Queensland Police Service, as part of an annual analysis, show the level of crime in 2023 was the worst since 2001.A total of 603,321 offences were committed last year, an average of 50,276 per month—up by 7.3 percent from 2022, when a total of 562,022 offences were recorded.
Queenslanders aged between 10 and 17 commit more crimes than the general population, but that is a trend mirrored in every state.
The types of crime, however, differed with young offenders committing nearly four times more robberies, and three times more break-ins than their older counterparts. In the 2021/22 financial year, 23.2 percent of youth offenders in Queensland had committed three crimes or more, with 61.8 percent being one-off offenders.
Young Offenders Seek Notoriety: Police
Acting Assistant Commissioner Andrew Massingham—who has been put in charge of the police response to youth crime—said he believes social media is the primary reason young offenders break into homes and steal cars.“It’s not to obtain property for personal benefit. It’s to live-stream and gain notoriety,” he said.
Long-time campaigner for victims rights Ben Cannon said the statistics back his contention that “the community [is] feeling unsafe and worried.”
“The challenge we’ve got in Queensland, and the government has to come up and answer this question, there’s nowhere to put these people,” he said. “So the police are doing a great job at catching them, what they’re running into is, and the judges are running the same problem, there’s nowhere to house them.”
Meanwhile, the youth justice systems in Queensland, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia have also been criticised in a report by Save the Children, which found that all three states relied on “tough on crime” measures characterised by the use of excessive force, restraint, and adult facilities to detain children—all of which it deemed a breach of children’s rights.
