This month the Queensland government announced it would invest $332 million into a raft of initiatives and law reforms to tackle youth crime across the state.
The funding will go towards boosting police resources, supporting community safety, and to address the cause of juvenile offending.
Breach of bail will also be reintroduced for young offenders in the state, despite Annastacia Palaszczuk's government removing it as an offence for children in 2015 and heavily criticising the LNP for adopting it as a policy.
Ms Palaszczuk said a petition that had gathered more than 150,000 signatures which called for the reintroduction of breach of bail as an offence was also a key reason for the policy backflip.
As a result, the changes to how young criminals are dealt with in Queensland are being discussed widely.
In Queensland, at least 15 deaths have been linked to alleged youth crime in the past two years, six of those in the past six months.
ABC Radio Brisbane Mornings host Rebecca Levingston has aired a special program giving voice to victims, offenders, and the experts in charge of law and reform.
This is what Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, former Supreme Court judge Margaret McMurdo, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service (ATSILS) principal legal officer Greg Shadbolt had to say.
Premier takes 'full responsibility' for outcomes
Ms Palaszczuk told Levingston this month that her government had "comprehensively responded" to the community's concerns over escalating crime levels.
"My whole government is focused on this," she said.
"There's not a day that goes by that we're not focused on keeping the community safer and tackling these complex causes."
The Premier said 83 per cent of young people who came into contact with the youth justice system did not reoffend and it was the remaining 17 per cent, "repeat offenders", whose behaviour had been "escalating".
"I take responsibility for health, housing, youth crime in Queensland," Ms Palaszczuk said.
"These issues are very complex.
"These are not issues that can be solved overnight.
"It's not a one size fits all solution."
The "largest investment" Queensland has ever made in youth justice includes a plan to build more detention centres.
But Ms Palaszczuk said they would be smaller, take about 18 months to build, and offer services designed to help detainees work through the issues causing them to turn to crime.
"We are changing the way in which we are building detention centres," she said.
"[They will be] looking at the most complex cases and how to rehabilitate some of most serious offenders."
Locking more kids up 'not the answer'
Speaking as a patron of the Justice Reform Initiative, which aims to support criminal justice reform based on evidence, Ms McMurdo said she was concerned about the increasing incarceration of young people.
"Locking more and more children up is not the answer because it causes more crime and makes communities less safe," she said.
"One of the problems happening is there are so many people in remand, by the time they get sentenced they've been in custody so long the only sentence that can be imposed takes into account how long they've already spent in custody.
"[Then] they're let out with a lack of support."
Ms McMurdo said the justice reforms would mean even more children in overcrowded detention centres.
"You're damaging traumatised kids who we should be helping to address their issues and grow up and become decent members of the community," she said.
"We know we can do that if we put enough resources into these children and their families.
"It costs $2,000 a day to keep a child in youth detention.
"Under the current laws, serious offenders are dealt with quite severely, and rightly so. They're likely to stay in detention for some time.
"But the kids are not getting the programs and getting the education they should be."
Describing the political hype around which party could bring in the harshest laws against young offenders as a "law and order auction", Ms McMurdo said Queensland had stood out for using the issue as a key election strategy.
Exposing kids to 'better criminals'
Keeping kids in custody while they await sentencing simply introduces them to a "breeding ground for bigger and better criminals", according to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service (ATSILS) principal legal officer Greg Shadbolt.
"I have personal experience where I had one chap in Beenleigh who went into detention having never taken drugs and came out a drug addict," he said.
"The vast majority of kids in detention in Queensland — of the 286 [in detention], 259 are on remand — these kids are not being sentenced, they're simply being held in remand and not having the opportunity for rehabilitation.
"They're rubbing shoulders with kids who are experienced criminals.
"We get that people are upset and demand action, but we need action that works. And all the research tells us that locking kids up, unequivocally, it doesn't work."
Mr Shadbolt said toughening bail conditions would only "widen the funnel of kids going into detention".
"It's about educating the public, it's about being smart on crime. Yes, there are some kids who should be locked up and locked up for a very long time," he said.
"But most kids come from broken homes, they're damaged goods, and they've been sexually abused.
"Simply locking these kids up doesn't work, it's totally counterproductive.
"You don't lock kids up in places that are going to exacerbate trauma.
"We need to invest upstream in housing, employment, health. That's crucial."
With all Queensland detention centres at capacity, Mr Shadbolt said more needed to be done in providing "preventative services".
And he said the planned new, "therapeutic" remand centres were simply detention centres by another name.
"It's not about having more cells or beds, it's about being at the front end of reducing the number of kids coming into custody and who are offending," he said.
"Let's get mentoring programs in place. Let's get social workers helping kids as soon as they come into court."
