Nearly one in three children on Queensland’s serious repeat offender index is under a child protection order, new figures show.
As of 30 June, 133 of 452 serious repeat offenders had child protection orders, which are made when the children’s court decides a young person needs to be protected from harm.
The data also reveals that in September there were 461 children on the index. Of those, 71 children aged 14 or under were classified as serious repeat offenders, while 284 were aged 14-16 years of age and 106 were between 17 and 18 years old.
The Queensland figures were revealed last week in answer to a question on notice by the Greens MP for Maiwar, Michael Berkman.
In her response to the question, the state’s youth justice minister, Di Farmer, said the index was developed “as a guide to identify the cohort of young people whose offending is so serious and so frequent they pose a significant threat to community safety”.
The index, which was developed in 2021, scores child offenders based on “their history, the seriousness, frequency and clustering of individual offences”, Farmer has previously said. It also takes into consideration the time they have spent in custody.
‘A path into a life of crime’
The chief executive of the Youth Advocacy Centre (YAC), Katherine Hayes, said it was concerning to see such high rates of children on the index under child protection orders.
She said YAC often sees children criminalised for behavioural issues which would not happen if they occurred in a stable family environment.
“For example, if a child threw something at the wall there might be property damage,” she told Guardian Australia. “Sometimes the residential care workers can call the police … and that can start a path into a life of crime.”
Hayes said there was a “real crossover” between children in residential care and in the youth justice system.
“It’s not a good environment for establishing a productive pathway for children, particularly those as young as 10 to 13, because there’s no connection for them. They don’t belong anywhere,” she said.
“And they go looking for that and they find it in the wrong places.”
Hayes has called for the government to invest in the professional foster care model, which she said was cheaper and more effective.
“The Queensland government did a pilot, which apparently worked, but for some reason isn’t funding it.”
The child safety minister, Craig Crawford, and the department director general, Deidre Mulkerin, flew to Sydney in September to meet with New South Wales counterparts to discuss their professional foster care model.
“We’re constantly exploring new opportunities and new ways of doing foster care,’’ Crawford said in a statement to Guardian Australia.
“Foster and kinship carers are the backbone of the child safety system and we value them enormously.”
PeakCare Queensland’s CEO, Tom Allsop, was alarmed by the figures but said this trend would continue until there was a clear long-term strategy for addressing the drivers of youth crime.
“We know the drivers putting young people on a collision course with the youth justice system significantly overlaps with risk factors for involvement with the child protection system,” he told Guardian Australia.
“[The] government must do more to support these young people in their care to break the cycle of offending and ensure they are not falling through the widening gap between two disconnected systems.”
Guardian Australia has contacted Queensland’s child safety minister for comment.
