Could it be that lawless, reckless children determine who wins government in Queensland? Youth crime in Queensland is dominating news bulletins and social media feeds, but will fear, loathing and a distrust of the existing frameworks be the issue that turfs the incumbent government out on election day?

On October 1, 2024, Queensland Premier Steven Miles dissolved parliament in preparation for the 2024 Queensland State Election on October 26, his Labor Party taking on David Crisafulli’s Liberal National Party (LNP) for the right to govern Queensland. The LNP is spearheading its campaign with its ‘Adult Crime, Adult Time’ youth crime policy announced in July 2024, which will enact stricter penalties upon young offenders by holding them to account and punishing them as adults under the adult justice system, in a bid to tackle the youth crime crisis.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that there were 10,878 young offenders aged 10-17 in Queensland in 2022-23, an increase of 6 per cent from 2021-22. Of these young offenders, 73 per cent of were male, and the most common offences were ‘acts intended to cause injury’ (23 per cent), followed by theft (17 per cent).

In 2016, the Palaszczuk government passed the Youth Justice and Other Legislation Amendment Act, which involved moving incarcerated 17-year-olds out of adult prisons and into the youth justice system, closing Children’s Court hearings to everyone except victims and family members of the accused, and protecting youth offenders’ identities from the media. The bill was widely celebrated as a victory for human rights.

Seven years later, in August 2023, the same government under the same leader suspended the state Human Rights Act and altered a clause in the Youth Justice Act from ‘detention as a last resort’, to ‘a child should be detained in custody to ensure community safety when other measures of prevention are not sufficient enough.’ This amendment allows police to hold children as young as 10 in detention indefinitely; a decision slammed by experts as a violation of basic human rights.

So, what happened? How did the same government go from championing human rights in 2016 to stripping them back again nearly a decade later? Is the youth crime crisis a problem that could’ve been avoided? Will locking up teenagers actually solve the problem, or does the solution lie elsewhere?

Shadow Police and Community Safety Minister and LNP MP for Ninderry Dan Purdie served for 25 years in the Queensland Police as a detective for the Child Protection Unit on the Sunshine Coast prior to entering state parliament. He says that youth crime was one reason he put his hand up to run for parliament in 2017.

“I was on the front line when the Labor government (under former Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk) started watering down the youth justice laws. Today, nearly a decade later, crime rates have skyrocketed, and our hard-working police feel like they’re working with one arm tied behind their back,” Mr Purdie says.

“Police morale is at its lowest, and officers are leaving in droves because they feel undervalued and not supported. We now have 1147 fewer police on the beat than Labor promised at the last election.”

Mr Purdie says that one of the top priorities for any government should be the security of its citizens.

“Our police deserve the laws and resources they need to keep our communities safe, and the rights of victims must be put ahead of offenders. We trust and value our hardworking police, and our top priority is giving them the strong laws and resources they need to keep our community safe,” he says.

The LNP believes its youth crime policy will deter future young offenders from offending, and many victims of youth crime publicly support the policy in hopes it gets young criminals off the streets.

These supporters include Russell Field, who lost his son Matthew and Matthew’s pregnant fiancee Kate in 2021 after they were struck and killed by a teenager driving a stolen car while drunk and high on drugs. This tragic event inspired him to run in the 2024 state election as the LNP candidate for the Capalaba electorate in Redland, east of Brisbane. Another public supporter of tougher crime policies is Cindy Micallef, whose 70-year-old mother Vyleen White was fatally stabbed by a teenager at a shopping center in Ipswich on February 3, 2024. These incidents have sparked anger from many Queenslanders, with citizens from Brisbane to Townsville forming vigilante groups to help patrol and protect their neighbourhoods from young criminals as they believe the police and the youth justice laws are not effective enough.

However, the policy has been criticised by youth justice experts who say locking up children under the adult system will not solve the problem, and that the solution lies elsewhere.

Mooloolaba Rotary Club youth service director Sandra Harrington, who previously worked as a teacher since 1966, says she has seen the school system continue to fail disadvantaged students impacted by physical, emotional and academic issues outside of their control, such as illness, disability, poverty, homelessness, neglect and abuse by unemployed or incarcerated parents, and language barriers. These problems lead to young people entering the justice system much too early.

“Detention is not the answer,” she says. “Young people become angry, they feel no compassion for others and instead associate with others like them who understand their anger and their disconnection with society.”

Ms Harrington believes community-focused organisations such as Rotary can help catch vulnerable young people before they slip through the cracks.

“Early intervention and education is the key to providing young people with a sense of belonging,” she says. “A sense of success and an opportunity to participate in the community supported by positive role models… our objective is to support young people to participate positively in the community and to develop an attitude of service to others: service above self.”

Meanwhile, UniSC Criminology and Justice senior lecturer Dr Susan Rayment-McHugh, whose research delves into youth crime prevention, also agrees that early intervention and support is key to stopping crime before it starts.

“We can’t put all our focus into how to respond to crime after it has already occurred … in addition to thinking how to best respond to youth crime once it’s occurring, we need to also be investing time and money into research and intervention and prevention services much earlier on,” she says.

“There is strong evidence around programs supporting families working more effectively. Things like home-based programs or family-based programs supporting families with young children, so getting children into school, keeping children in school, helping young people build a positive connection with their community, these things are what we should be focusing on earlier in the process.”

Crime is an unavoidable problem that impacts the safety and wellbeing of every citizen. However, is it right to strip away the rights of young offenders who have been failed by the system and abandon them so the rest of society can feel secure, without even trying to rehabilitate them? Are some young people just destined to languish away in prisons forever, for reasons beyond their control?

“We need to shift the balance towards prevention, and there are so many interesting things that we should be exploring in terms of justice investment. Instead of spending so much money in responding to youth crime, we should be investing in broader prevention activities earlier in the system, to stop youth crime before it happens,” Dr McHugh says.

The office of Queensland Police Minister, Mark Ryan MP, was contacted for comment but did not reply.