April 21, 2026
The former Director-General of the Queensland Corrective Services Commission, Keith Hamburger AM, has called for an independent inquiry into what he has labelled as “systemic failures” in the State’s justice and corrections system.
Speaking on ABC Radio National on Monday, Mr Hamburger said in many parts of Queensland there were people living in fear of crime despite recent statistics released by the State Government which showed a drop in youth offending.
Mr Hamburger called for a bipartisan consensus in State Parliament on policy, an approach which he said had driven down crime and rates of imprisonment in northern Europe.
He also targeted the “silo-ed” approach to tackling issues in disadvantaged communities, which was where many offenders came from.
Mr Hamburger said the recidivism rate from juvenile detention centres was “somewhere in the vicinity of 90 per cent”; and in adult jails it was about 70 per cent for First Nations inmates and 50 per cent overall.
“These are significant failures that drive crime because recidivists go out, in many cases, and commit worse and more serious crimes,” he said.
“Recidivism from our jails is a major issue and that is a governance issue in the sense that Ministers need to hold those Departments to account to reduce that.”
Mr Hamburger said he had called on the previous government, and now this government, to chronicle all the failures across the system, from issues within disadvantaged communities to the failures in jails and the inadequate services provided to courts in assessing offenders before sentencing.
He agreed that bail should be removed for “problematic” juvenile offenders.
“But if you abolish bail for young offenders and then keep pumping them into the same, broken youth juvenile detention system where they will get further criminalised (they will be) spat back out into the community as a recidivist.
“So we’ve got to look at the whole picture and that’s why I propose we have an independent inquiry led by somebody of Supreme Court justice status to actually address the solutions.”
He said peak bodies and First Nations communities had been putting forward “very sound and structured suggestions for years” which needed to be discussed in an inquiry.
“And then come back with priorities to reduce the gross overcrowding in our jails and juvenile detention centres which can readily be done by a different approach to incarceration,” he said.
Premier David Crisafulli told the ABC that Queensland’s “stronger laws, more police, early intervention and rehabilitation” had led to a 7.2 per cent drop in the number of victims of crime in 2025, while juvenile serious repeat offenders were down 17 per cent.
A recent report from the State Government statistician found there were 16.7 per cent fewer youth offenders in 2024-25 compared with 2023-24.
