Almost 300 children have been charged with breaching their bail conditions in the two months since the Queensland government’s controversial new youth justice laws have taken effect.
The Palaszczuk government overrode Queensland’s Human Rights Act in February to introduce legislation that made breach of bail an offence for children. Experts lambasted the changes, warning they could unfairly punish innocent and disadvantaged kids for simply missing an appointment or breaking curfew due to violence at home.
The figures were revealed in parliament on Wednesday after the opposition moved a motion accusing the Palaszczuk government of weakening youth crime laws by abolishing the LNP’s breach of bail offence in 2015.
The shadow police minister, Dale Last, said “victims of crime across Queensland have had enough” and “want change”.
In response, the state’s new youth justice minister, Di Farmer, said 299 young people had been charged with a breach of bail offence “in under two months since the new laws have been in place”.
Under the LNP’s bail laws, which were revoked by the Labor government in 2015, 185 young people were charged with breach of bail over the 27 months that the offence was in place, Farmer said.
Queensland’s human rights commissioner, Scott McDougall, said he found it “troubling” that those numbers were “presented [by the government] as some sort of positive achievement”.
“I know people in the community are concerned and feel unsafe but charging children for missing appointments or not showing up to school is not the answer,” he told Guardian Australia.
“The evidence is very clear that locking up children increases the likelihood of them becoming recidivist offenders, so what we are doing here is actually creating a class of future adult offenders.”
Under the previous LNP laws, which were criticised as “double punishment”, it was an offence to be found guilty of committing an offence while on bail.
By contrast, the current legislation means that a child commits an offence if they breach their bail conditions.
The chief executive of the Youth Advocacy Centre, Katherine Hayes, said there had been a spike in young people being granted bail on 24-hour curfews, which she said was very easy to breach and would result in a new criminal charge.
“The increased breaches of bail further criminalise disadvantaged young people, and entrench them on a path of criminality rather than rehabilitation,” she said.
A criminologist and the Leneen Forde chair of child and family research at Griffith University, Silke Meyer, said children had been used as “political pawns” by both major parties.
“The criminological research evidence clearly shows that youth justice isn’t the answer to behaviour change... [they need a] holistic wraparound support response,” Meyer said.
“If we lock them up, they may be off the street for the next 12 months. But afterwards, you’re gonna have a hardened criminal coming out of a youth justice facility.”
Meyer said children couldn’t vote and so did not have a voice when it came to policies that affected them.
“I think politicians and the media have a key responsibility in not just running a narrative that’s useful to their next election campaign, but a narrative that actually educates the community,” she said.
The Labor MP for Townsville, Scott Stewart, said the state government was tackling youth crime “from both ends”.
“[The new breach of bail laws mean] that, for the first time this century, it will be an offence for young offenders to breach bail conditions in Queensland,” he said.
“As the community expects, we will be tough on those repeat offenders who commit the majority of crimes and we will continue to invest in early intervention programs, which we know are making a difference.”
Queensland police and the youth justice minister have been contacted for comment.
