And while the state government insists it is still trying to help kids avoid being caught in the complex cycle of crime (and some working in the space agree),the loudest public voices are those demanding tougher punishments.
Recent youth crimes have sparked fierce debate among the community and party leaders Annastacia Palaszczuk and David Crisafulli.Supplied
Until political leaders can find or be forced to muster the courage to truly step back and add politically inconvenient facts,not election fuel,to such a heated debate on and,we’re doomed. The cycle of reactive politics spinning the cycle of crime.
Take this year’s version,for example.
When the latest proposed and almost certain-to-become-law youth crime plan after two months of pressure and three high-profile alleged killings by teens,it came from Police Minister Mark Ryan.
For limited scrutiny in a rushed two-week period before parliament,the bill was not passed to the group of MPs who usually cover issue of kids,youth justice and social problems at the root of their behaviour.
Instead,it went to the economics and governance committee chosen – in part – because it had two former police officers as members,according to a government spokesperson. (There has been strangely little mention so far of the).
The plan itself will criminalise things that aren’t a crime,such as missing an appointment while on bail,and hand more power and money to the police. There will also be two new children’s prisons - as experts continue to warn of an.
That’s not to say any of these experts excuse the horrific examples or threats of violence which comprise some youth offending,or believe there shouldn’t be consequences for the actions and better support for victims. Nobody does.
But their message has also been constant and clear for many years,with only really made when community outrage fuelled a of political pressure.
In the committee this week,pressed by at-times combative LNP and Labor MPs,Queensland Human Rights Commissioner Scott McDougall agreed there was a logical argument in the short-term solution to the claims () of a youth crime “crisis”:lock up the group of about 400 so-called serious repeat offenders, and many in the,to stop them reoffending.
“Clearly that is the intention behind this bill. However,those children will eventually get out and what we know from the evidence is that they are going to be more likely to reoffend and cause harm to other victims. I do not know that I can make it any clearer than that,” he said.
McDougall referred to the by Griffith University’s Ross Homel that remand triples the risk of reoffending. On the other hand,research from the US shows the states that achieved the largest reductions in youth incarceration saw the greatest drop in arrest rates,with intervention programs. The list goes on.
Despite all this,a key Labor MP even went so far as to question the. Experts,meanwhile,have rejected some ministers’ claims of “evidence” to support the U-turn to criminalising breach of bail,something Labor previously opposed. Youth Justice Minister Leanne Linard has.
Members of the LNP opposition,led by David Crisafulli,have also used statistics stripped of key context – like the decades-delayed introduction of 17-year-olds into the youth justice system – to misleadingly claim the number of youth offenders had risen.
The result of the to toughen laws in response to genuine community fears about safety during well-known was,unsurprisingly,that more kids were held in without rehabilitation.
Deputy Premier Steven Miles almost said the quiet part out loud in January,before his,when he acknowledged some new measures were to help mop up the mess left by that anti-evidence,band-aid solution.
“They respond to the effects that have occurred in the system as a result of the changes that we’ve introduced previously,” he offered.
Lawyers and human rights advocates have slammed Queensland's new youth crime laws,saying they will lead to more children reoffending.
Those effects? and a reliance on police watch houses to hold kids.
Many,including,say rapidly rising prison populations amid decades-long slides in offender rates for adults and kids show the issue is not crime but how we deal with complex and intergenerational societal challenges.
this week described it as an “entrenched ... social welfare crisis” which governments should be leading the community through. by a team of academics from the Queensland University of Technology.
Ruby Wharton,a Gomeroi Kooma woman and community development officer at Sisters Inside,told the committee of the police contact she had experienced but said herself and others had managed to avoid the system because of such organisations and their communities “building a bridge in order for us to create opportunities for ourselves”.
Debbie Kilroy,chief executive of the organisation supporting criminalised women and girls and a,said:“What you are basically saying is that as adults—I think we are intelligent adults across this state—we cannot support 300 to 400 children in a way where harm is ended. I think that is a sad indictment on all of us.”
It shouldn’t have to be.
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