With an election on the horizon, the Queensland government has begun posting tallies of the children arrested and charged by its flagship “saturation” youth crime operation.
The announcement of Taskforce Guardian’s 1,000th arrest included a video with a musical backing track, a press conference with government ministers and a public statement. There was more fanfare when the number hit 1,200 in May.
The taskforce is what police call a “flying squad” – a unit of detectives who travel from town to town, targeting young people alleged to be involved in crime and their known hangouts, arresting dozens, then moving on to the next region.
Senior police say the operation is designed to target “serious repeat offenders”. But as arrest numbers grow month by month, concerns have emerged that the operation is forcing some of the state’s most vulnerable kids – some as young as 11, with little criminal history, and accused of low-level crimes or bail breaches – into the “brutal” detention system.
Data obtained by Guardian Australia also shows that severe overcrowding in local watch houses – where children can be held in custody for several weeks on remand – typically follows a taskforce deployment.
These periods of overcrowding have coincided with allegations of serious assaults, incidents of children self-harming, and concern from police that they cannot meet “basic expectations”.
“Every time [Taskforce] Guardian comes through, we get the list of kids in the watch house and there are new kids, younger kids, ones we haven’t seen before,” says Genevieve Sinclair, the chief executive of Youth Empowered Towards Independence in Cairns.
“They are putting these on a trajectory that will ensure they reoffend.”
Guardian Australia was in Cairns in May, during the most recent taskforce deployment to the city. At the start of the week, there were six children in the police watch house. Two weeks later, there were 16.
A series of incidents in the Cairns police watch house in January, revealed by Guardian Australia, occurred during a period when there were up to 20 children in the police holding cells after a taskforce deployment.
During that period a psychologist, Andrea Bates, compared conditions to “abuse” and said children were not being properly fed or cared for. Several incidents were reported, including an allegation of sexual assault of a boy, 13, and a fire lit in an overcrowded cell holding four boys.
Leaked notes about the cohort of children in the watch house revealed concerns about a “massive deterioration” in their mental health, and concerns about one child self-harming by banging his head against the wall.
“The conditions that the kids are held in are brutal. It’s a really awful environment for young people. It’s damaging and traumatising,” says Katherine Hayes, the chief executive of the Youth Advocacy Centre. She says children are being arrested for “fairly minor breaches”.
“So sometimes [in the past] police might have looked at diversion more often than they are at the moment.
“At the moment because of the community concern, police are more readily arresting kids … they’re being held in custody more, more readily.
“Being brought into the watch house for minor offences means that they’re entrenched in the youth justice system, rather than broken free of the cycle. When kids are coming out of the watch house or the detention centre at the moment, they are angry, they are traumatised … and they have real difficulty in integrating back into society.”
‘Just shifting the problem’
Police declined an interview. They have said the success of Taskforce Guardian is demonstrated in crime statistics showing a decrease in youth offending, particularly in areas of the far north such as Cairns.
Hayes says this is not success – it simply hides away issues, and risks making them worse in the long term – by keeping more children in custody in the lead-up to a state election.
“The youth crime figures [might] do go down momentarily, but that’s just shifting the problem into the watch house and not preventing it from reoccurring,” she says.
Police supplied some data on request in April that showed of the first 1,126 arrests of children, 675 of those – about 60% – were taken to the watch house. The other 451 were offered diversions, which includes cautions and restorative justice referrals.
The data also showed that of 3,763 charges laid by Taskforce Guardian, more than half were for minor or technical offences which would usually not attract a sentence to detention. Children were charged 739 times with breaching their bail conditions and 1,324 times for “other offences” – a category that includes drug offences, stealing and property damage.
The QPS said it would be too time consuming to provide other data requested, including the ages of children charged, and how many were first offenders. Police provided an anonymised “case study” of a young person from the Hervey Bay region who had been found breaching his bail conditions.
“Taskforce Guardian was able to connect him to safe accommodation and refer him to appropriate support services, while also clearing up outstanding criminal matter and assisting with bail condition amendments,” the QPS said.
‘We have a zero tolerance’
At a press conference in May, the officer in charge of Taskforce Guardian, acting assistant commissioner Andrew Massingham, said he had instructed officers to take a “zero tolerance” approach to children accused of breaching their bail.
The Queensland government suspended the Human Rights Act last year to pass new laws, under pressure form the state opposition, criminalising technical bail breaches. At the time, the attorney general, Shannon Fentiman, told state parliament the laws would give the state an additional intervention point for children.
Massingham told reporters that police had conducted about 65,000 bail checks – 180 a day – seeking to enforce those conditions, and were laying charges for every single alleged breach.
“One of my key criteria in our harm reduction strategy is very much a zero tolerance approach to offending on bail or breaching conditions on bail,” Massingham said.
“My instruction to that group of detectives is that we have a zero tolerance in terms of that sort of offending.”
Police said in a statement its “first priority” was community safety.
They said locations for Taskforce Guardian were chosen “in consultation with the relevant district … to ensure extra resources and efforts are placed where needed most to enhance community safety”.
“The capacity of QPS watch houses fluctuates continually. Demand and capacity figures are closely monitored and transfers between watch houses and detention facilities are instigated when needed, to appropriately accommodate the operations of the watch house and welfare of those in custody.”
Police say Taskforce Guardian works to “foster a positive rapport” with young people.
Hayes says high-visibility or high-arrest policing operations result in many marginalised young people feeling “targeted by police”.
“They feel that they’re not being given any kind of chance at rehabilitating, and that we see their involvement in the watch house entrenches them in that cycle of re-offending.”
• In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800; adult survivors can seek help at Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International
