The Queensland Liberal-National Party’s so-called “fresh start” for Queensland’s youth detention system is anything but fresh. Over the weekend the LNP released its detention reform program as part of its “Making our Community Safer Plan”, citing their “Detention with Purpose” program as a fresh start for Queensland. However, what we really got was a rehash of the tired, punitive measures of the past dressed up as rehabilitation — where words like “discipline” and “purpose” were being trotted out to mask the root causes of so-called youth crime and the very nature of rehabilitation.
The plan claims to reform youth detention by focusing on discipline and rehabilitation through compulsory education, behavioural management programs, and a zero-tolerance approach to violence. Under this proposal, privileges like TV and social time would be earned through good behaviour, while violent behaviour would result in enforced periods of isolation (solitary confinement). The plan aims to reduce “recidivism” by imposing consequences for both good and bad behaviour, alongside a 12-month post-detention support program to supposedly help kids reintegrate. But beneath all of the fancy footwork and buzzwords, it’s just another punitive approach that punishes children for the failures of the state.
Put aside the fact that we do not have the kind of “youth crime crisis” that LNP Leader David Crisafulli would have you believe. This was aptly debunked by criminologists this month, who offered data demonstrating a dramatic decline in youth crime rates in every state across Australia. Children are being used in this election as electoral fodder to win votes, and Crisafulli is so desperate to be elected that he seems prepared to throw our kids into hard cells to get the top job.
The reality is, children’s prisons have become the default response to all of society’s problems — poverty, lack of housing, inadequate access to education, and the absence of proper healthcare. In blaming children for these failures, the LNP has created a policy that is not only unjust but will also be cruel and ineffective.
Let’s be clear: youth detention centres are not and will never be places of rehabilitation. They are children’s prisons. They are designed to punish, isolate, and control children, many of whom have already suffered at the hands of the state through racist policies of child removals, over-policing, surveillance and systemic neglect. And yet, the LNP wants to sell the voting public on the idea that locking a child away in a prison will somehow “rehabilitate” them — as if the state, as the commanding force in the child’s life, can be the correcting agent to “turn the child’s life around”. For many of those children, the state has been a violent and racist abuser.
This is a plan built on a false premise: that children in prison are there because they need discipline and consequences for bad behaviour. The LNP conveniently sidesteps the state’s role in producing the conditions that lead to criminalisation in the first place. Compulsory education, framed as a solution in this plan, feels more like a band-aid for a gaping wound.
If the LNP truly valued education for our children, why would they rip kids out of classrooms to lock them in cages? Why not pack support around our kids to keep them in the community? How can we expect kids to engage meaningfully with education while the trauma, instability, and abuse they’ve experienced goes unaddressed? Schools often fail these children long before they are imprisoned. Once they’re inside, the LNP offers no plan for individualised support, no resources for trauma-informed care, and no pathway to genuine healing.
Education inside a prison is not a solution; it’s the state’s admission of failure. If education were truly a priority, we would not need prisons to deliver it. Forcing children to learn while isolated from their families and communities, under the psychological pressure of confinement, is nothing short of cruel.
Moreover, we must acknowledge that many of these children are victims themselves — of abuse, neglect, systemic racism, and social deprivation. Imprisoning these children is a grotesque act of victimising them all over again. It is the state’s attempt to erase its own culpability by shifting the blame onto the very children it has failed.
The LNP’s plan to use solitary confinement — a form of isolation known to cause severe psychological damage and considered by the UN as a form of torture — is presented as a way to “reform” these young lives. But the reality is punitive measures like solitary confinement and behavioural management programs do nothing to reduce reoffending. These practices, in fact, make things worse by compounding the trauma that led many of these children into conflict with the law in the first place.
Instead of rehashing punitive measures, the LNP should be focusing on social policies that build up our communities. We need more resources for public housing, education, mental health services, and opportunities for children to heal and grow in their communities, homes, and classrooms — not in prisons. Growth and development cannot happen behind bars. It happens in safe, nurturing environments where children are supported, not blamed and punished for circumstances beyond their control.
The LNP’s “fresh start” is a fundamental failure right from the beginning. Its so-called plan to reduce the criminalisation of our children will only increase the harm done to some of the most vulnerable in our communities. Under this policy, the real victims will be our children — criminalised, punished, and abandoned by a party more interested in slogans and soundbites than in genuine solutions.
The state must be held accountable for the well-being of every child, especially those in its care. It’s time to stop pretending that prisons are the answer. Children deserve better. They deserve real care and support, not just a new name for the same old punishment.
