More children are being held in watch houses and a number are detained "for an extended period of time", Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll told ABC Radio Brisbane today.
Commissioner Carroll said watch houses were a "temporary solution", which for some young people was "the only way" to stop them re-offending.
She said in the past 12 months, 100 more children were held in watch houses than the 12 months before.
Most were between 15 and 17, and had committed "extraordinarily serious offences", she said.
"As we have become tougher around this offending, particularly this high-end offending, more children are ending up in watch houses," Commissioner Carroll said.
"You don't have the 90 per cent spend much, or if any, time in our watch houses, so we're talking about high and serious offending that we're all finding very difficult to grapple with.
"The group of children we’re mostly speaking about is the group that are breaking into houses, stealing cars and constantly doing that."
As of Wednesday morning there were 88 young offenders in watch houses in the state, Commissioner Carroll said.
"Currently we have a number of children that have been held there for an extended period of time," she said.
"What we try and do is get resources to come in youth justice — nurses, health — to assess those children and assist us with dealing with those children."
But advocates say they are having difficulty getting access to young offenders.
Youth Advocacy Centre chief executive Katherine Hayes, earlier this week, said a young person with an intellectual disability had been in a watch house for more than 30 days without "any kind of support" and limited family visits.
Commissioner Carroll said police also had to consider community safety.
"Everyone, whether you're the judiciary, the police, all of the departments that we work for, the NGOs, we're all in this together to come up with solutions to address these issues," she said.
Community safety the priority: police minister
Police Minister Mark Ryan said the government made "no apologies" for children being detained in police watch houses.
"It has always been the case no matter where you are in the world that from time to time people are detained in watch houses," he said.
"We make no apologies for detaining people who have been lawfully directed to be detained.
"The priority here is community safety, these are offenders who have committed harm against the community and the courts or police have determined in the interest of community safety they have to be held in detention."
Queensland's Human Rights Commissioner Scott McDougall was pushing for data on the number of children being detained in police watch houses to be released publicly on a regular basis.
Mr McDougall said details on the number of children, their ages and the length of time spent in the watch houses was critical information for transparency and accountability.
"My office has been in touch with Queensland police in recent weeks and it's my understanding that discussions are well advanced on agreement to release this information on a regular basis," he said.
Ms Carroll said she would look into the regular reporting of that data and would check if there were any policy or legislative issues around its release.
When asked about the public reporting of the number of children in watch houses, Mr Ryan did not indicate a position but said he was aware that those figures were provided by police in response to media enquiries.
Yesterday the Queensland Police Service told the ABC that already this year, 25 young people had spent more than three weeks in watch houses.
Why are they waiting so long?
Queensland opposition deputy leader Jarrod Bleijie said he wants an inquiry into why children were being held in watch houses for so long.
"The Commissioner points out that the watch houses are temporary, so they're there for a day or two as they are going, and preparing to go, to remand before their trial is heard in court," he said.
"Why are these kids in the watch house for so long? Because they should be in remand centres at the youth justice facilities.
"The government has to answer the question, why are they not going to remand at a youth justice facility? And how has that been mismanaged?"
Mr Bleijie said the state government had not invested enough in early intervention programs.
"You do have a cohort of young offender that is out there now that an early intervention program is not going to work for, they are beyond that early intervention program, they need more training and so forth which is in the detention centres, that's what has to happen," he said.
"There's got to be some inquiry into why we have 88 kids in watch houses, are the youth detention centres full? How many kids are in the detention centres?"
