Losing a generation: Kids aspiring to go to Clevo in remote Far North

Remote Far North communities are creating “lost generations” of children who aspire to only to go to jail to get “street cred” as troubling new Closing The Gap results are released.

A young Aboriginal boy arms himself with a rock and a length of wood before walking towards other boys playing in the street in Aurukun, a small Indigenous town on the Gulf of Carpentaria, 800 kilometres north northwest of Cairns on Cape York in Far North Queensland. Picture: Brendan Radke

Remote Far North communities are creating a lost generation of children who aspire to only to go to Cleveland and then onto Lotus Glen to get “street cred”, as a new Closing The Gap report reveals a troubling report card for young Indigenous men.

The Productivity Commission’s latest Closing The Gap Annual Data Compilation Report released on August 1 shows young Indigenous people in Queensland are going to jail more, are less likely to complete a university degree and more likely to die by suicide than in previous years.

The report also shows the number of Indigenous children removed by child protection is higher than 2019 levels and that less than 40% of Indigenous people in very remote Queensland communities are engaged in employment or education.

Cleveland Youth Detention Centre. PICTURE: MATT TAYLOR.

Community members say rising offence rates and rising incarcerations are leading to a whole generation of young people aspiring to be like the adults who have been in jail.

Tania Major, a Kokoberra woman from Kowanyama where unemployment has doubled over the last 10 years to 48 per cent and which has a life expectancy of just 53, said that many young people in the community were increasingly looking up to convicted criminals as role models.

“The trouble is the kids see no future. Kids want school, they want jobs, but they cannot create it themselves,” she said

An education worker from Aurukun who asked to remain anonymous said a lack of opportunity meant one’s status in town and purpose in life was increasingly being determined by how well they fought for their family in clan violence.

“I mean, when someone gets out of jail they are like ‘wow man, don't mess with him’. It given them street cred,” they said.

“A few weeks a car got stolen and the kids were excitedly talking about how the kid got sentenced to Cleveland and how cool that was.”

The worker said a lot of the violence at Aurukun school stirred up when kids returned from Cleveland “more troubled and more violent than when they got in there”.

Figures released from the Department of Youth Justice show the proportion of Indigenous youths held in Cleveland Youth Detention Centre had increased from 90% to 92% over the past four years.

Tania Major. Picture: Brendan Radke

It is a Closing the Gap target by 2031 to reduce the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people (10-17 years) in detention by at least 30 per cent.

Another Aurukun community member said: “Yeah young men say ‘I’m going back to jail – we have no food here’ or ‘we run out of food so I in jail they look after you’.”

It comes as legal insiders told the Cairns Post about 100 of the 974 prisoners in Lotus Glen are from Aurukun – double 2019 levels – as Aurukun’s recorded offence rate hit a new high in 2023.

In 2023 there was a record 2052 charges made in Aurukun.

Aurukun hit a monthly crime record of 238 charges in September 2022 – doubling the annual average of 1079 charges between 2012 and 2021.

Police officers stop outside a house in Aurukun, a small Indigenous town on the Gulf of Carpentaria, 800 kilometres north northwest of Cairns on Cape York in Far North Queensland. Picture: Brendan Radke

“There are no jobs, there are no role models,” Tania Major said.

The Annual Data Compilation Report shows that Queensland reached the highest rate of Indigenous imprisonment since records began in 2009 and more than double 2013 levels.

SNAICC National Voice for Our Children CEO Catherine Liddle said the closing the gap report showing “over-representation” of Indigenous people in prison meant the government needed to “change the way they do business”.

“To be absolutely clear, these are not the failings of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people or culture. These are fairly and squarely the failures of the systems that impact us the most being built without us, to work against us,” she said.

Originally published as Losing a generation: Kids aspiring to go to Clevo in remote Far North