Juvenile Crime: What Is The Answer?

Opposition Leader and Member for Nanango Deb Frecklington

May 30, 2019

By Anne Miller

Juvenile crime has been at the forefront of local police reports now for more than 12 months, with break-ins, car thefts and vandalism occurring in South Burnett communities every week.

southburnett.com.au had the opportunity this week to sit down and talk with local MP, Member for Nanango and Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington, about the problems in the juvenile justice system.

The LNP mantra has been the current Palaszczuk State Government is “soft on crime” but that raises the question, where can we lock up juvenile offenders?

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It is a human rights issue that children cannot be held in watchhouses. Juvenile detention centres are over capacity.

First thing, I want to say is that this never happened under us. When Palaszczuk talks about it going back to 2013, that is an absolute furphy.

We have legislation to prevent an adult being held in a watchhouse for longer than a certain period of time, but we have no limit on juveniles. We believe that juveniles, if they have to be in the watchhouse, should not be there for longer than 72 hours.

They should be processed and they should be moved on to the Juvenile Justice system.

If that means there has to be more demountables built overnight, then that’s what has to happen.

If we can have a mining town built in three days, we can put some more accommodation within the correctional centres for juveniles.

Relief needs to happen immediately. The people from the watchhouses will say it and the human rights people are saying it.

We’ve had (Youth Advocacy Centre chairman) Damien Atkinson, QC, support our push to have the legislation changed to 72 hours so once a child goes into the watchhouse they have to be processed and out within 72 hours.

You say 10-year-old kids are being locked up for weeks.

They are in 24-hours light. That’s the thing that gets me the most upset. That’s why they’ve got the blankets over their heads.

Could you imagine being in a little room for 24 hours a day? They’ve got no interactions with adults except through a bit of glass.

These are kids that haven’t even been convicted yet. There’s got to a better way for processing and looking after these children in a more humane way.

That means more pressure on juvenile detention centres.

The reason why they are so over-crowded is because Labor has botched the transition of 17-year-olds from adult prisons into juvenile.

We’ve been saying that from day one. If you don’t make more beds available, you’re going to have a problem. It will flow down into the juvenile justice system. And that’s exactly what has happened.

When we lost government in 2014, we had on the table then a plan to build another corrections facility for around $600 million.

When Labor got in, they took it out of the Budget, out of their costings and stopped another correctional facility being built.

After the Minister knew that 4 Corners were going to uncover this (watchhouse issue), they announced funding for another 35 beds when we’ve got 70-odd kids in the system.

In between the election that we lost and that announcement, there has been no funding for any more correctional beds.

Could a new juvenile correctional facility be built somewhere in the Wide Bay or even the South Burnett?

I’m not making any financial commitments in relation to that this far out from an election but I would be happy to talk to the local community and see what they think and get some feedback.

I know that our police officers, for example in Murgon, on any given day usually have at least two officers transporting either juveniles or someone else to a watchhouse.

And that takes more people off the ground here.

The system of transportation of anyone on their way to a watchhouse or a prisoner takes thousands of hours out of the policing rosters on the ground so something needs to be looked at there.

There’s got to be a more efficient way.

If breach of bail becomes an offence, we will end up with more children in custody.

We should be budgeting to make sure that there’s beds for them. We’ve got to send a strong message to these kids that if you do the crime, you’ll do the time, and that may prevent the kids from doing it.

There’s a bigger picture community view as well.

We need to ensure that we’ve got the right services that are reaching out to these kids, because some of these juveniles would prefer to go and spend some time in juvy than they would stay at home. And that’s not good, either.

The current watchhouse system isn’t working; bail houses aren’t working – and that’s been proven in Townsville – so we need to ensure that we’ve got enough beds.

But it does start right back at home, right back at school and right back in ensuring these kids know that it is wrong to do the crime that they’re doing.