Children armed with large knives, wearing balaclavas, breaking into homes, stealing luxury cars, showing off their exploits on social media.
They are scenarios Queenslanders see regularly on the nightly news, through grainy CCTV and often accompanied with looks of despair from fed-up homeowners who want something done.
And police say evidence suggests children are becoming more violent.
Teenagers are alleged to have been responsible for several killings in recent years. Emma Lovell, Vyleen White, Matt Field and a pregnant Kate Leadbetter, Robert Brown, and teen victims themselves: Angus Beaumont and Balin Stewart.
Families are crying out for change.
And Andrew Massingham is the man entrusted to do something about it.
Andrew Massingham, who joined the QPS in 1986 fresh out of school, has worked as a detective across some of Queensland’s biggest cases, including triple murderer Max Sica. Credit: Jamila Toderas
The seasoned detective, formerly Brisbane’s regional crime co-ordinator, has now been in charge of the Queensland Police Service’s youth crime portfolio for 11 weeks.
But his plan to fix the issue stretches far into the future.
The tender age
Officers try to divert child offenders at every opportunity, Massingham says, to break the cycle of delinquency.
But authorities are caught in a difficult balancing act – trying to keep the community safe, while listening to academics who say the cycle can never be broken if law enforcement continues the way it has.
A teenager was charged with the murder of Vyleen White, 70.Credit: Nine News
Many in the community call for children to be locked up over serious crimes, yet experts say detention only reinforces the cycle.
Massingham agrees that the research academics speak to is strong.
In January, when he laid out his plans for addressing youth crime, he wanted officers to determine which juveniles they thought they could help – and those they thought they could not.
He can see the difference. He talks of nine at-risk girls he spoke to recently in Toowoomba, who later joined Project Booyah, a program to steer kids back into education and employment.
“The ones that concern me are the ones in Cleveland Youth Detention Centre in Townsville, that are in there for the fourth or fifth time, and there’s just no way you can interact with them.”
Massingham recalls how he gave evidence recently at the Youth Justice Committee, explaining many prison staff were at threat of assault or being spat on by kids.
“To think you could have a program that they’re actually going to meaningfully interact in is not going to happen, so the challenge then is how to engage with that child once they’re released.”
He says intervention needs to happen earlier – from birth to age five.
Women should be supported before giving birth, Massingham believes, to identify if a child could be at risk of being brought into an environment of domestic violence.
Intervention for teenagers of 15 years old, Massingham says, can be too late, and the emphasis on intervention sometimes “overshadowed community expectation around that serious cohort”.
What if the courts decide to release them?
In a bid to stop the flow of juvenile offenders returning to the streets, Queensland police now write stronger affidavits as part of their objections to bail, Massingham says.
But if a magistrate decides to release the child, Massingham says prosecutors now will be encouraged to take the matter to appeal in a higher court.
“One thing that does concern me is the perception that the community doesn’t feel safe.”
Andrew Massingham
This year police have made five appeals to keep children detained – two in Brisbane, two in Cairns, and one in Rockhampton.
So far, 180 people have been charged with a new online boasting offence, Massingham says, the charge allowing police to bolster their bail objection affidavits.
A race against crime
Criminologist Lauren Humby agrees intervention in those first few years is a crucial strategy, with the potential to reshape lives and prevent future offending.
“But it demands more than fleeting initiatives – what we need is a shift in our commitment,” says Humby, who teaches about youth, deviance and juvenile justice at the University of Southern Queensland.
Relatives of several people allegedly killed by young offenders in recent years, including Emma Lovell (second left) and Angus Beaumont (second right), were among those at the Parliament House rally last year calling for change on youth crime.
“We spent a staggering $1.3 billion on detention and community supervision in 2022-23. Imagine redirecting just a fraction of that towards health, education, and social services.”
The state government, under Premier Steven Miles, says it will wait for recommendations by the parliament’s youth justice select committee, particularly on the legal principle that magistrates must consider detention as a last resort for young people.
His chief rival, Opposition Leader David Crisafulli, continues to campaign for tougher laws for juveniles, announcing this week he would remove the principle in the first two months if his party wins government in October.
In 2022-23, more than 8100 children spent time in watch houses or stations.
Some as young as 10 are held in watch houses.
“Watch houses are not made to house children,” judge Deborah Richards writes in the latest Children’s Court report.
She also details how in Supreme and District courts, numbers almost doubled from the previous year.
Serious repeat offenders – the 20 per cent “that the community rightly or wrongly saw were returning to the streets with some kind of frequency”, Massingham says – were responsible for 54.5 per cent of charges before the courts.
This is the group police have been targeting in recent weeks.
“They just go from one house to the next, a convoy of stolen cars, it’s a common MO that’s growing, and then livestreaming.”
Andrew Massingham
“If we’ve caught them in a stolen car last night, I don’t want them just put in the watch house for the stolen car,” Massingham says.
“I want them put in for the 20 that they’ve done over the last week or two.”
Tale of two cities
Massingham’s team has identified the Gold Coast and Mackay as particular cities of concern.
Taskforce Guardian, a police operation with about 30 officers and some youth justice workers, regularly deploys to areas with concerning levels of youth crime.
Problem areas can change from month to month, with the Gold Coast an area of priority, he says.
“I’m also finding the number of unique offenders is increasing.
“That’s telling me we have a new group down there that are reoffending, and they’re recidivist offending, and they’re not being held in custody.”
Massingham says part of the issue is that youth crime is more visible than ever.
“Simply because of CCTV and the like, it’s always going to dominate news where you’ve got vision.
“Where you’ve got vision, and conflict, and you’ve got a story that people are very interested in on the nightly news, you’re going to get a level of perception that it’s happening more frequently than potentially it is.”
Label attached by the ankle
Massingham, the son of retired stipendiary magistrate Ray Massingham, says he understands the complexities faced by the courts, but respects police are able to appeal if they don’t agree with the magistrates’ decisions.
“There was always that talk, [that] I’d follow the legal profession, but I didn’t because dad being exposed to the type of work he did when we were out west, he was the local coroner as well.
“So the police would come to our house and pick dad up if there was a fatality that had to be investigated, and I got an interest in that aspect of policing, I suppose, from a young age.”
In January, Massingham told reporters four juveniles had been fitted with ankle bracelets as part of an electronic monitoring trial.
By March, 11 children have been fitted with them, he says.
“So you’ve got a large cohort on bail, and if you’ve got offending on bail, where you’re getting people injured or killed, then maybe there should be other options we should be looking at – and electronic monitoring, in our view, is one of those.”
Massingham says police are asking for the trial to be expanded in more locations, with a push to have the eligibility criteria made easier, so magistrates can consider electronic monitoring when releasing a child.
An ankle monitor may not stop the child from offending. It will, however, tell police when they’ve breached their bail or curfew, to prevent further offending, he says.
But experts such as Humby warn the visibility of ankle monitors “can stigmatise and isolate young individuals”, reinforcing delinquency rather than deter it.
“By tagging a juvenile with an ankle monitor, we are not just tracking movement, we are tagging them with a ‘criminal’ label that sticks,” she says.