The Queensland Labor government has passed laws which will see children fitted with electronic monitoring devices while on bail.
But according to numerous submissions to government, this was done against the recommendation of a major report being used as justification for the policy, based on “inconclusive evidence” and a “misleading” interpretation of human rights requirements.
The 2018 report which the state government said recommended the policy did not actually call for the policy which was passed by the Queensland government on Thursday.
As part of Queensland’s punitive youth justice crackdown, accused offenders aged 16 and 17 may have to wear an electronic monitoring device as a condition of receiving bail, and may be kept in custody until an assessment is conducted and the device can be fitted.
Judges will be able to impose the monitoring if the child has been charged with a “prescribed indictable offence” and has previously been found guilty of at least one indictable offence.
The policy will be trialled over the next 12 months in Townsville, North Brisbane, Moreton, Logan and the Gold Coast.
There are concerns that the electronic monitoring will disproportionately impact Indigneous children, stigmatise and isolate the young people and do little to deter further crimes or reduce recidivism.
The evidence used by the Queensland government to justify the harsh policy is shaky at best, and the report being held up as calling for the change does not in fact do so, as many groups have pointed out.
During the debate in Parliament, Minister for Police and Corrective Services Mark Ryan said the electronic monitoring reform had been recommended by former Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson in a 2018 report.
But as numerous submissions to government pointed out, the Queensland policy that has just been passed is not even close to what the former Commissioner recommended.
In his report, Atkinson said electronic monitoring could be used as an alternative to detention. In the government’s own committee report, the Labor government admits that “these provisions do not facilitate electronic monitoring as an alternative to detention”.
Atkinson also warned that “caution must be exercised in extending this technology to children”, and that the tool should be used to facilitate the earlier release of young people from prison.
“The most suitable timing would perhaps be towards the end of a long sentence if behaviour in detention indicates that early release subject to electronic monitoring would be successful if the child were supported in the community with case management,” the Atkinson report said.
The Queensland reforms will see electronic monitoring used on children before they have been sentenced to a crime, rather than as a way to get them out of detention.
In his report, Atkinson also recommended that electronic monitoring should only be applied when the child’s lawyer actually applied for it, and that “there may be very few children for whom this is a suitable option”.
None of these factors stopped the Queensland Minister from claiming the policy was “recommended” by Atkinson though.
This was called out by the Youth Advocacy Group in a submission to government.
“It did not, as has been reported, recommend that it be implemented,” the submission said. “Rather, it recommended that the issue be further examined but was generally of the view that its use would be very limited. It did not envisage the use of electronic monitoring in the circumstances described in the bill.”
Greens MP Michael Berkman, one of the few QLD MPs who voted against the legislation, also pointed this out in Parliament.
“What the Atkinson report actually recommended was that the government consider, with serious caution, electronic monitoring as an alternative to incarceration,” Berkman said. “Yet the minister’s own department says, as is quoted in the committee report, ‘these provisions do not facilitate electronic monitoring as an alternative to detention’.”
There are also significant questions around whether there is any evidence at all that the policy will do anything to address youth crime or recidivism.
In its Statement of Compatibility with Human Rights, the Queensland government claimed that “studies have shown that electronic tracking may help to reduce rates of reoffending on bail”.
But the Queensland Human Rights Commission said this is “misleading”, with the government relying on three outdated sources, one that showed mixed results, and another from 1994 which doesn’t consider young people at all.
“The Commission is unconvinced that the evidence-base is established to demonstrate that use of trackers will either deter crime or decrease offending,” the Human Rights Commission said.
There are, however, numerous studies that have found electronic monitoring of young people does not address any of the issues the Queensland government is attempting to.
An American study in 2015 found that electronic monitoring “does little other than expose youth to more punishment for typical adolescent behaviour”. A further trial electronic monitoring program by the Centre for Court Innovation in New York City in 2019 for 16 to 18 year olds was labelled a failure.
In its own committee report, the department said that it “recognises there is limited research available”.
The Australian Lawyers Alliance warned that the policy could actually increase recidivism in young people.
“There is very little benefit in incurring the substantial costs of introducing electronic monitoring of young people on bail, given the evidence that there is no significant positive effect in terms of crime reduction, and the substantial risk that young people required to wear such a device are being set up to fail, resulting in increased incarceration for this vulnerable cohort,” they said.
The Human Rights Law Centre said the policy “sets [children] up to fail”, and electronic monitoring amounts to “excessive punishment, a disproportionate restriction of liberty and not an appropriate response to children engaging in criminal behaviour”.
“While slapping GPS devices on children and young people might serve a political purpose and make the public feel good, GPS devices don’t prevent crime, all they do is tell the police in a snapshot where somebody was at a particular time,” the HRLC said.
“Rather than investing in GPS tracking devices, the QLD government should be investing in increasing and expanding voluntary programs that target and address the individual needs of children that have been shown to actually reduce the risk of reoffending.”
In Parliament, Berkman branded the reforms as “dangerous, knee-jerk, disgraceful legislation”.
“They will increase stigma, they will prompt racialised violence and vigilantism and they will reduce young people’s engagement with education, employment and support services,” he said.
“They will use young kids in Queensland - disproportionately First Nations kids - as guinea pigs.”
Denham Sadler is a freelance journalist based in Melbourne. He covers politics and technology regularly for InnovationAus, and writes about other issues, including criminal justice, for publications including The Guardian and The Saturday Paper. He is also the senior editor of The Justice Map, a project to strengthen advocacy for criminal justice reform in Australia. You can follow him on Twitter.
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