Steven Miles has accused television news bulletins of being “addicted to CCTV footage of crime”, making it harder for the government to have nuanced discussions about youth crime in Queensland.
In comments made to Amy Remeikis for the Guardian’s Australian politics podcast, out on Saturday, the Queensland premier said Labor had a “real focus” on early intervention programs, but it was “harder to tell the story”.
“In particular the TV media is kind of addicted to CCTV footage of crime. That’s their bulletin now, and it’s much harder, up against that, to tell a compelling story about that early intervention work, but we’re doing it as well,” Miles said.
Youth crime has emerged as one of the main flashpoints of the state election, which will be held on 26 October.
The government has repeatedly passed legislation increasing punishment for youth criminals, including removing the legal principle of detention as a last resort.
The opposition is promising to sentence many youth criminals as adults, which would mean a mandatory life sentence for child murderers.
That’s despite police data showing youth crime is at record lows, and a lack of evidence supporting the idea that longer sentences reduce crime rates.
But Miles said it was difficult to get “headlines” or “tell the story” of a response to crime outside punishment.
“There is a community expectation of consequences for action, and I don’t blame people for that,” Miles said.
He said the government planned to open a number of “therapeutic” prisons for young people, including a remand centre at Wacol and a new 80-bed jail at Woodford.
The government also launched a new youth justice strategy in July.
“The evidence, now that we have traditional detention centres operating side by side with therapeutic detention centres, is the rate of recidivism is lower after spending time in our therapeutic centres,” Miles said in the podcast. “And that’s why we’re building more of them.”
In a report in June the Family and Child Commission found recidivism rates for Queensland youth criminals released from jail was as high as 96%.
“So what we also know, though, is, for many of these young people, detention is an appealing place to be,” Miles said. “That’s the real tragedy here, is there are young people for whom a detention centre is safer and more loving than their home is.”
Miles also criticised the Greens, saying they tell people “you can have all the nice things, anything you want” without being able to deliver on their promises.
“Sometimes I think … about myself as a young, ideological person interested in politics, and I wonder whether I would have been drawn to the Greens, and … I realise I wouldn’t have been,” he said. “For me the power of politics is about being able to govern, getting into government and making a difference.”
Asked about his nickname – “Giggles” – and his reputation of being uncomfortable in the limelight or in public speaking, Miles confessed the job of a politician “doesn’t come natural to me”.
“But it is the thing I need to do to be able to do the job I love, and so that pushes you outside your comfort zone and teaches you. You learn ways to cope,” he said.
“And certainly I’ve been jealous at times of some of my colleagues, who, you know, for whom it comes a bit more natural, or who draw energy from those situations … rather than being drained by it.”
